


Something So Precious About This

by trixicbean



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: AU - Kara lands at a different time, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, Evil Lillian Luthor, F/F, Family Fluff, Fluff, Good Person Lex Luthor, Lesbian Lena Luthor, Lois and Cat become Kara's moms, Nia and Carter are her siblings, Pansexual Kara Danvers, Slow Burn Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor, and trans storyline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26107459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trixicbean/pseuds/trixicbean
Summary: Top Tip:When you leave an exploding planet don't get stuck in the Phantom Zone for twenty-six years so you land on a weird planet, where you don't even know the language, late and your cousin has to (quite unwillingly) take care of you.-Or the one where Kara lands at a different time aged five for plot reasons and stuff happens and she ends up with Lois Lane and Cat Grant as her moms, Nia as her awesome alien sister and Carter Grant as her too-smart for-his-own-good brother. While Lex Luthor turns out to be a good guy while Lillian Luthor runs rampage on Metropolis and Lena ends up being looked after by her amazing and very feminist big brother who introduces her to Kara at a young age and it takes them a long time to realise they are in love.
Relationships: Cat Grant/Lois Lane, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 137
Kudos: 419





	1. Opening of Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> if there are italics they are speaking in Kryptonian.

It is the grounding of a foot uncompromising

It's not forgoing of the lie

It's not the opening of eyes

\- _Nina Cried Power,_ _Hozier_

* * *

This isn’t a life story. This is a love story. This is a story that spans ten years. It doesn’t start at birth or end with death. It starts with pain and ends with happiness, like any good tale, but the pain doesn’t leave, the happiness just enters. This is a story of love and finding it in the darkest times, it happens in every life but it is not about life, it is about love. 

Kara had felt love before. Before everything. Before her planet exploded, she lost her whole family, she lost all the love in her life. Before she was flung into a void for twenty-six years and she was robbed of all purpose and reason in her life. Before she landed on Earth, aged five with advanced intelligence and had her cousin look after her. Before she discovered her cousin couldn’t even speak his own mother tongue and instead used his powers to become the world’s most powerful man, completely discounting all Kryptonian values. Before she discovered her cousin was human. 

This story starts when she found love again, not romantic or platonic but familial. This started when she was five and she found Ukiem again. More specifically, when she woke to find herself careening towards Earth. Stars flying by her window in bright streaks creating the worst fireworks display known to man, they shouldn't make you feel this dizzy. Kara tried to gather her thoughts, shutting her eyes to focus. She wasn't meant to have fallen asleep, she was meant to just have landed straight away, but she was accelerating as though she’d just been pulled by something. 

As she thought, memories came flooding back to her in overwhelming flashes: immense panic then lots of running, then her mother giving her her necklace. Kara’s hand reached up to her chest, it was still hanging there. Then she was put into a pod, this pod, and she was sent off to follow her cousin. Her cousin. 

Suddenly something changed and she was no longer flying and instead she was falling, hurtling towards something. Kara’s eyes snapped open and all she saw was orange fire engulfing her and then it wasn’t, everything jolting as a cloud of yellow dust was thrown up all around her. 

Kara tried to gather her thoughts again. Her cousin. Kara sat up a little straighter and looked around. There was no pod near her. Panic began to overwhelm her more and more. There was no one around, everything just looked wrong. She thought it would have been a desert if it weren’t enshrouded in a yellow glow. Then she remembered she wasn't on Krypton. She wasn’t under Rao, she was under a yellow sun. 

Rao was gone.

A sudden bang shook her ship and Kara looked up to see a man clad in blue with what Kara thought was a blanket billowing behind his back and his hands on his hips. The House of El symbol was emblazoned on his chest, even if it was defaced with the colours of the House of Nir. He looked a little like her uncle too but where his features were hardened Jor-El’s had been softened. It was like how Astra was to Alura, the devil to the angel. A flood of sadness suddenly overcame her and her vision faded to black as her eyes showed her those final moments again: the flashes, the screams, flying rock, her mother’s face as she watched her go. 

Everything. Gone. 

She was pulled back to the present by a loud noise and Kara looked up again, he’d ripped off the top of the pod. A waste of perfectly good equipment if you asked Kara, there was a button after all. A hand reached into the pod to help her out. Kara couldn’t exactly refuse it, she let him help her out of her pod. 

He said something. It sounded like “Aj aem Sueparman,”. Kara had no idea what he was saying. 

“ _Kal-El?_ ” she asked in the vain hope that he was her cousin, even if he was an adult and her cousin was a baby. He was wearing their family symbol, the one she had adjourned on her chest where her mother’s necklace lay. Kara reached up and clasped it in her hand, her last memento of Krypton and her family.

He seemed to recognise the name, tilting his head a little and listening before moving it up and down slightly. “Hau du ju no?” he spoke more words that Kara didn’t know, it was another language, one Kara never learnt. 

“ _I don’t understand you,_ ” Kara tried to keep all her emotions from welling up. The tears stinging the back of her eyes as she started to piece it all together. She must have gotten stuck in space, hence the acceleration and the sleep, so Kal was older. She looked down at herself, she wasn’t. She was still five. “ _Are you Kal-El?_ ” she asked again, she needed him to be Kal-El or who else was it, who had stolen the House of El symbol.

He moved his head up and down again, “Jes,” he smiled. A smile, Kara knew that one but she still had no idea what he was saying, absolutely none at all. He obviously didn’t understand her and Kara didn’t understand him so she just looked at his outfit. The House of El symbol in the House of Nir colours and the blanket that Kara recognised flying from his back. He stared at her curiously and she moved her hand to the blanket, stroking down the material. It was Kal-El, that was his blanket. 

“ _Kal,_ ” Kara smiled and he just looked at her exasperated, picking her up and flying off. Kara screamed. What was going on? Why was she leaving the pod? There were things in that pod. Things she needed. 

“Be kwiat,” he demanded but Kara had no idea what else to do so she just screamed more, tears beginning to fall as she remembered the last she had heard screams. Screams of a dying planet, of everyone she ever knew and she ever loved being killed in the same moment. “Aj aem taikin ju sum wair seif,” he insisted, his voice full of annoyance but Kara didn’t understand him at all so she just kept screaming as more and more tears began to flow and he took her away from everything she ever knew. 

But it wasn’t Kal whom she found Ukiem with, there was no love. He hated her, with almost every part of himself. He despised who she was, what she represented, that she didn’t understand him and he didn’t understand her. He had no patience. 

Then there was Lois, his wife but not his Zhao. She was everything. She was there as soon as Kal landed with Kara in a strange what Kara assumed to be a city but everything was just wrong. Kara had stopped crying by then. Her lungs worn out and her throat scratched raw. She spoke in the strange language too, but quietly and to Kal and not Kara. She called him something that sounded like ‘Klark’ though. They had a quick conversation while Kara hid her face in Kal’s cloak. It didn’t smell like Krypton anymore but it was familiar. How long had he been on Earth?

Lois had a calming voice. Kara didn’t understand what she was saying when she crouched down in front of Kara but her voice was soft and she was gentle even if she was harsh and direct, by the sounds of it, with Kal. She exchanged a few words with him and he flew off again, leaving the cape for Kara by what seemed to be Lois’ orders. 

Lois then stayed crouched in front of Kara, never touching just close by. Kara just held the blanket. She just wanted to know what was going on. She said something else, “Erosh bem,”. Kara knew that one. It was bad and in a clipped accent but she knew what she was trying to say, trying to speak Kara’s language. Just a simple ‘hello’ but it was familiar and recognisable. 

“Erosh bem,” Kara smiled, her throat hurt as the words left her mouth and her lungs burned, the tears having taken everything out of her. Lois held out a gentle hand for Kara to take as she stood up. Kara took it, it felt safe. Lois led her inside and through to what Kara assumed was a seat. She signalled for Kara to sit on it and Kara did so cautiously and Lois just smiled and went to a different area before returning with a cup filled with a liquid, it looked like water. Kara studied it curiously, she needed it, her mouth was incredibly dry. She looked up at Lois who just moved her head up and down like Kal had earlier and smiled. 

Kara guessed it might be okay and she took a cautious sip. It was water. She gripped the glass with her other hand and started to drink. She really needed to drink. Kal returned just as she finished the drink, handing the glass back to Lois. He was carrying something Kara recognised. Kalex. 

“ _Kalex!_ ” she laughed. 

“ _Hello young one,_ ” he spoke in the familiar robotic Kryptonian. 

  
“ _What happened? Is this Earth?_ ” her barrage of questions began to flow out. 

“ _Slow down, little one,_ ” he interrupted her, “ _Yes, this is Earth and that is Kal-El but he’s known as Clark Kent here and that’s his wife, Lois Lane. You were sent from Krypton but the planet exploding knocked your pod off course and you were stuck in a place called the Phantom Zone for twenty-six years, you were in a coma and no time passed. Your cousin is now twenty-six and he’s Earth’s hero called_ Superman _,_ ” he spoke in the language Kara didn’t know again. It was the same thing he’d used to introduce himself at the start. 

“ _Why is he in the colours of the House of Nir?_ ” Kara asked. 

“ _He doesn’t know much of Krypton. He doesn’t even know the language,_ ” Kalex confessed and Kara’s heart sank. She was alone for all except a stupid service robot, a smart one but still a robot. 

Lois moved forward, saying something to Kalex in the language Kara didn’t understand and then Kalex turned to her. “ _Lois wants you to know that you aren’t entirely alone and that she will do everything she can to help you. You’ll be staying with her and Kal,_ ”. Kara looked up at the woman sitting in front of her and turned to Kalex again. 

“ _What happened to Krypton?_ ” she asked, she didn’t want to know though. 

“ _No one survived but you and your cousin,_ ” he confessed and the tears came again. Kara pinched herself. It wasn’t a nightmare. It was real life. Everyone was gone. Everything was gone. 

She didn’t notice Lois give Kalex a panicked look or that he translated the words, she just felt herself being pulled into a hug. Arms wrapping around her and holding her close. Kara relaxed a little into it. They weren’t familiar but they felt safe. They could become familiar. 

The next morning she woke up in the same place but the arms were gone and she was wrapped in the blanket, a soft thing placed under her head. There was a moment before she opened her eyes where she was back on Krypton, in her own bed with her mom and dad sleeping next door but it was brief. She opened her eyes and after a second of confusion, everything came flooding back. Sadness seemed to seep into every crevice and the tears came again, unrestrained. 

“Kara?” the gentle voice again, it was Lois. She looked up through her watery eyes to see her, her vision was blurred and she couldn’t focus on it. “ _I had Kalex teach me a few phrases of Kryptonian,_ ” she spoke slowly and deliberately, her accent clipped but her voice was still gentle. “ _And he gave me these translation things. Anything you want to say you can type here and it will say it in English. Mine will do the same but with Kryptonian,_ ”. Every word was deliberate, her eyes looking off into the distance as she seemed to recall the words. 

Kara took the thing offered to her and studied it. “ _Do you need anything?_ ” a more robotic voice asked. Lois had used her translation tool. “ _Kalex recommended some foods that are similar to Kryptonian ones and Clark went to buy some,_ ”. Kara was hungry, very hungry. 

She typed her response into the tool and the word was repeated, “Thank you,” and the unfamiliar characters showed up at the same time. Kara repeated the phrase, she was going to need to learn the language. Lois smiled at her. It was a comforting smile. 

“ _Do you have any questions?_ ” the robotic voice again. Kara had so many she didn’t know where to start. 

“Lots,” the thing produced as she typed in the word, the unfamiliar characters again. Two had been in the last one though, Kara made a mental note, they didn’t make the same sound though. 

“ _Any I can answer?_ ” Lois replied and Kara thought for a second, which was most urgent. She had so many. 

“What do I need to know about Earth?” she eventually typed, listening carefully to the robotic voice, some of the characters made the same sound this time but that ‘t’ was very inconsistent. Lois started to type, it took a long time but Lois seemed to know what she was doing, bringing out a circular thing before she clicked play and she started to explain how Earth worked and the languages, countries and cultures. It was succinct and just the basics but it took Kara’s mind of everything else. She’d been to twelve, now thirteen, planets and none were quite like Earth, like how many languages do seven billion people need? 

Kal showed up not too much later with food. Lots of things that Lois said were types of fruit and vegetables, it turned out Kryptonians largely had what humans called a vegetarian diet. The fruit was similar to that on Krypton and the bread reminded her of their own food but her favourite was by far this thing called potstickers that they had on Krypton, but with a sweeter filling. Kara could have eaten a hundred of them, they were so familiar. Lois laughed as she ate them, Kal muttered something about Chinese places being awkward to get to, Lois then had to explain what China was. 

Kara spent the rest of that day with Lois showing her her room and then telling her more about Earth. They found a setting on the Translator that could basically give Kara subtitles to life and she insisted on using it. Lois didn’t want to push her but she didn’t want to hear the familiar language anymore, each word had been said by someone she’d loved, by someone she’d lost. She just needed five minutes to forget Krypton. It was easier to forget something when you didn’t have to hear the language. She didn’t always have to look at the subtitles. 

But it wasn’t always so easy to forget. She cried herself to sleep that night, Lois insisted on staying with her and Kara ended up falling asleep in the safe arms again. Then the night just got worse. The flashes of her memories dominated her sleep as she constantly relived the worst moments of her life again and again. 

Lois woke her up that time, in the middle of the night. It was a good thing. It ended the endless cycles. The same moment replaying again and again as she was forced to watch everyone and everything die. Thank Rao that Lois stopped it. 

“ _I’m here, Kara,_ ” she whispered in broken Kryptonian, her arms holding Kara closer. She needed it, she let Lois hold her close as she could. She just didn’t want to feel alone anymore. She wanted it to stop. She just wanted it to stop. She just really wanted it all to stop. 

Kara woke up the next morning and Lois was there, awake and watching Kara carefully. “ _Are you okay?_ ” she asked gently. Kara just nodded, she had learnt that head movement meant yes, apparently moving it side to side meant no. It was easier than talking. When she spoke her breath caught in her throat and the tears started to fall again.

Kara took a deep breath before trying to speak, remembering what she’d heard yesterday, the words she’d connected. “I want to learn English,” she tried and Lois’ eyes lit up with a smile. 

“We can do that,” she smiled, holding out the translator with the translation but Kara didn’t need it that time.

She and Lois spent that first week with Lois teaching Kara English and all about Earth. She never pushed her to talk about anything else or anyone else. Kara barely ever saw Kal, he was always just out whether it was work or as a superhero, which was apparently a thing on Earth. When she did see him he always asked about Krypton in fast English Kara couldn't keep up with, maybe he was trying to learn more but Kara didn’t want to talk about it. For him it was twenty-six years, for her it was five minutes. 

It wasn’t until Friday that Kara spoke about Krypton. It was just her and Lois in her room. Lois was telling Kara about Earth’s complicated politics, just the basics, more specifically the topic of the Royals. Kara just felt a tug to say it and not like it was something important, just something to be shared. It wasn’t about her or her family but it was her planet and she wanted to share it for the first time so she did. 

“They had something like that on Daxam,” she smiled, her English had become much better in the last few days. 

“Daxam?” Lois asked with a smile, it was curious but not forceful. Kara knew she didn’t have to elaborate but she wanted to. 

“The planet next to Krypton. It was like a horrible Krypton, it had a King and Queen and a lot of,” Kara paused, trying to find the word, “Small kings and queens?” she tried. 

“Princes and Princesses. Do you mean the King and Queen’s children?”. Kara nodded with a smile. 

“The King and Queen had a lot of Princes and Princess’ and they all had these,” Kara tried to find the word again, it was frustrating, “People they didn’t give money for work,”.

“Slaves,” Lois smiled. 

“They had a lot of slaves and they would die a lot because they treated them badly and they would kill lots of people and the people had no money on the planet because they had it all,”.

“Sounds like Krypton was the better one,”. 

“In every way shape and form. They didn’t even worship Rao,”. Lois gave Kara a look, asking her if she wanted to go on. Kara didn’t. 

“Have I told you about religion on Earth?” Lois asked, changing the topic. 

“No,” Kara shuffled closer, fascinated. 

* * *

There were a lot of religions. 

* * *

“What’s going on?” Lois asked Clark at a whisper as he landed on the balcony.

“You remember Kalex told me about the cousin that followed me from Krypton, well she just landed. She doesn’t speak any English though,”. 

“So you took her away without trying to explain,” Lois looked at the small girl cowering behind Clark’s cape, “This girl just saw everything she knew die,” Lois hissed.

“So did I,” he shrugged. 

“You were a baby, you remember nothing. She remembers everything and to her, it feels like five minutes ago because Kalex said she would be in a coma in that place,” Lois sighed, ignoring his attempts to concoct a feeble excuse to crouch down in front of Kara. Her eyes were red raw and puffy like she’d been crying for hours. She looked back up at Kal. 

“Go see if Kalex has a language translator,” she told him and he looked about to fly off. “Leave the cape,” she added, warningly before turning back to Kara. Clark looked ready to protest. “I don’t care about your turns. She likes it,”. 

“Kara,” he told her quietly, dropping the cape off his shoulders before flying off. Lois turned back to Kara and dug deep through her brain for any Kryptonian. 

“Erosh bem,” she tried with some uncertainty. Did that mean ‘hello’? Kara's eyes filled with some recognition and she seemed to gravitate toward Lois a bit. Lois breathed a sigh of relief as Kara repeated her words with a small smile. Her voice was raw like she had been crying and screaming. Lois honestly had no idea what to do with children so she just went for the obvious idea, get her some water. Lois held out a hand for her to take so she could lead her off the balcony. She didn’t want to leave her alone.

It was to her complete surprise that Kara’s tiny hand slipped into hers. Lois stood up and led Kara through to the kitchen, repressing her urge to talk, she didn’t want to overwhelm Kara with too much with more of a language that she didn’t understand. She indicated the couch, urging Kara to take a seat. She did and Lois went to get her a glass of water. 

Kara was cautious when Lois handed the glass to her but after a very careful sip, she downed it all in one. Clark returned as she finished the drink. He was carrying Kalex. Kara’s eyes lit up as she saw him, recognition flashing across her face as she yelled in a thick accent before they started a fast exchange in Kryptonian. As their conversation went on Lois watched Kara become more and more deflated, sitting back into the couch, hiding her face and trying to keep tears away. 

Kara seemed to sink as she didn’t say anymore. Lois used the lull in conversation to talk to Kalex, asking him to tell Kara that she wasn’t entirely alone and that she would do everything she could to help her and to tell her that she would stay with her and Kal. Kal gave her a panicked look at that part but Lois ignored him. Kara needed something familiar. 

They exchanged a few words, Kara asking a question and then the tears started to come. “What did you say?” Lois asked Kalex violently, moving toward Kara.

“That she and Kal were the only survivors of Krypton,” Kal said and Lois was bringing Kara into a hug before even she could think of what she was doing. She felt Kara relax a little in her arms, Kara fitted perfectly. Lois just held her closer, it’s all she could think to do to help this girl who had lost everything. Kal didn’t seem too happy about it but Lois just ignored him. Either she focused on the five-year-old girl who had lost everything she ever knew and was on a planet where she didn’t even speak the language or the butthurt superhero who probably thought it was too early to raise a kid together. The decision was easy. 

Kara eventually cried herself to sleep, Lois covering her in Kal’s cape she was quite attached to it. Clark quickly explained it was a blanket from Krypton. Lois had to hide her laugh as he flew off to go find another cape, muttering something about sharp turns. 

“Kalex?” Lois whispered and he turned to face her.

“Can you help me learn some Kryptonian?” she asked and she spent the rest of the night with Kara sleeping on her chest as Kalex taught her some useful phrases. She was going to need a lot of coffee in the morning. 

Her learning a little Kryptonian and sending Kal off to get the translation devices Kalex told them about meant Kara seemed to relax a bit. She mainly just wanted to know about Earth and learn English and she was a quick learner. Lois didn’t ask why. She just followed one strict rule, don’t push Kara to talk about Krypton (even if it meant suppressing every single journalistic instinct in her body). It seemed to work fairly well, that and making sure she was never alone. Kara seemed to avoid one thing completely: time to think. Lois could tell her all about Earth all the time if it kept her calm while Lucy was creating an identity and a backstory for Kara Kent. Then she could get her help, find a therapist who worked with aliens. 

Kal didn’t seem to have the same understanding though. He wanted to know about Krypton which led to Lois constantly kicking him under the table and throwing him death stares every time he asked about it which wasn’t very often seeing as he decided to spend more time away than before. Lois let it pass, maybe he was reflecting on what he’d never had. It couldn't be easy to have someone there that could’ve taught you everything about who you are but never came and now he wasn’t who he thought he was because, as Kara pointed out in one of the few times she mentioned Krypton, he wasn’t Kryptonian. Not to his core anyway. 

So Lois looked after Kara. She didn’t understand why she did in the beginning, it didn’t feel like she had to, it was Kal’s cousin, instead, she felt a draw to her, to help her. Kara reminded her of someone. She was optimistic, curious, intelligent, determined and perseverant; she’d seen a planet die and she was still going. Lois had a feeling it was going to take a lot to take Kara down. 


	2. Life's Distraction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Want to yell at some idiots?”. 
> 
> “Always,".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm backkkk. 
> 
> sorry this took a while, i was busy with you school.

There's an art to life's distractions

To somehow escape the burning weight

The art of scraping through

Some like to imagine

The dark caress of someone else I guess any thrill will do

_ Someone New, Hozier _

* * *

Three weeks Lois and Kara spent together in the apartment. Kara’s English became almost perfect, she was nowhere near fluent and there was still the issue of reading and writing to confront but they had huge strides in the right direction. She could understand pretty much everything and could hold a conversation extremely well. Kara still hadn’t mentioned Krypton much more. Lois had learned her Jeju (the Kryptonian term for ‘mom’) was called Alura In-Ze and her Ukr (the Kryptonian term for dad) was called Zor-El but they were only mentioned in passing at midnight after Kara had woken from a nightmare. 

The nightmares were the one thing they couldn’t control. They were horrible and relentless. Almost every night Kara woke up screaming, shaking and sweating with all colour drained from her face and a distinct fear struck into her eyes which made them seem hollow and lifeless. Lois slept in her room every night, probably Clark’s biggest issue with the whole ‘arrangement’ (to use the term he preferred). They had tried one night with Kara alone but she had snuck into Lois’ room before Lois was even asleep. Lois felt useless, all she could do was hold Kara close and whisper comforts hoping it would pass. 

And it did. Somehow every morning Kara woke up ready to face the day with a resilience and steel Lois hadn’t even seen in The Man of Steel. But Lois was going to have to uproot her again. She had very little vacation left and Perry White wasn’t the most understanding person on the planet. Cat had been helping, between her and Clark a lot of Lois’ work had been covered but she was going to need to go back and she was going to need to take Kara with her.

* * *

“You must be the famous Kara,” an unfamiliar voice smiled as Lois pulled open the door to the apartment. It was apparently Lucy, Lois’ sister and a government agent. Kara looked up from where her face was hidden behind Lois’ leg. She looked nothing like Lois unless you counted the hair and eye colour. 

“Hello,” Kara spoke quieter than she expected to.

“Hi,” Lucy laughed. Kara hated that word, it was one of those weird ones that all sound like another one like ‘there’, ‘their’ and ‘they’re’ or ‘one’ and ‘won’. English was confusing. Kara hid her face in Lois’ leg again, Lois reached down to rub her hand across Kara’s back, leaning down and placing a kiss to the top of her head. 

“What did you come up with then, sis?” she laughed, stepping aside to let Lucy in. 

“Oh hey Lucy, how are you? I’m fine, thanks. Dad’s being annoying as hell, to be honest, but I’m coping fine with the fact I have to hide my girlfriend from him,” Lucy sniped sarcastically as they walked through the apartment, Kara still hiding a lot behind Lois. New people were not fun. 

“I was going to cover that in a bit,” Lois smiled, “Do you want a drink?”. 

“I’m good, thanks,” Lucy took a seat on the couch like it was her own, bringing one leg up and leaning against the knee and opening a bag. Lois took a seat opposite her, leaning into the side of the couch, tucking her legs beneath her. Kara clambered to sit next to her, leaning into Lois’ side. Lois wrapped an arm around her, holding her close. 

“How’s dad?” Lois asked with a shrug. 

“The usual,” Lucy sighed, taking a huge folder out of her bag, “Now I have a birth certificate, a certificate of adoption for you and Kal for her, a passport, social security number, a very long paper trail about some deaths and foster care and even a family tree and no one knows about it,” Lucy handed it over to Lois. There seemed to be a lot in there. 

Lois had already explained to Kara why they needed the backstory and the cover-up. How humans hated anyone who wasn’t considered ‘normal’. It was like tame Daxam. On Krypton everything was okay as long as you didn’t hurt anyone else. Living never hurt anyone.

“Thank you,” Lois smiled, she seemed relieved, relaxing a bit as she flicked through everything in the file. Kara looked between her and Lucy. She could see how they were sisters, both of them seemed to have the same hard walls that hid a softness. Kara zoned out as they spoke in fast English, taking the file off Lois and trying to understand the unfamiliar symbols swimming around on the page. They were so simplistic compared to the Kryptonian ones. There was a small book-like thing in there, it was a dark blue with gold lettering. It had a simple image. It looked like it could be the symbol of a house but it was so complex, an image of some kind of bird. Earth was confusing. 

* * *

One thing Kara had to admit she liked was Earth’s clothing. Women and men could wear whatever they wanted and she didn’t have to wear long skirts anymore. Though she did miss her crest. But Kara had to wear Earth clothing now she was going into work with Lois, and Kal she guessed, apparently they worked in the same place. From what she understood she and Lois had to take something called the Subway to get there because of something called traffic which was created by these things called cars which sounded weird. 

Kara officially found the one thing she hated most on Earth so far. Forget the weird yellow hue Kara still wasn’t quite used to and the multiple languages and weird political systems and under advanced science. The Subway was a nauseating, repulsive, busy, filthy and rundown trash can of a place. It looked like something out of Krypton’s dark ages. 

However, somehow, Kara managed to survive it, clinging to Lois for dear life the whole time. In her defence, it was very scary. But once they got through it there wasn’t much of a walk to get to the Daily Planet offices, it had a huge globe-like thing on top of it, you could probably see it from all over the city and it wasn’t like it was the prettiest thing in the world. 

It was like Lois read her thoughts, “ _I_ _know_ ,” she mumbled from next to Kara. The words brought her back to Earth, back to Earth. Rao that was weird to think. They walked into the building and Lois pressed a button in one of the walls, “ _There’s this thing called a lift so we don’t have to walk up all the stairs_ ,” she laughed lightly. 

“I didn’t know Lois Lane could speak another language other than some very rudimentary English,” a voice interrupted them. It belonged to a short woman, just a little shorter than Lois, and she was blonde too with soft brown eyes. She had this air about her which made Kara think she was the boss, in charge of everyone. 

“Cat,” Lois smiled from next to her, “How are you?”. Cat? Kara tried to figure it out. She looked like a human. 

“Lois,” Cat drawled, “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” she looked over at Kara, who found herself hiding behind Lois.

There was a sound and the wall opened up. The wall opened up. Kara hid behind Lois even more. She could see the maybe-human get into the space behind the wall, a hand sticking out next to the side for some reason. 

“ _ It’s okay _ ,” Kara didn’t register Lois' move but she opened her eyes to see her crouching in front of Kara, “ _ It’s just our technology. I ride in it tens of times a day, every day, week, month and year for the last five years. You can trust it, little one, _ ” it was her voice that seemed to calm Kara most and she nodded slightly, letting Lois lead her into the elevator. 

“So it’s just safe for me to assume she’s related to that side of Clark,” Cat smiled as the walls shut, no one else had gotten in. 

“Yeah,” Lois nodded, “Kara, this is Cat. I share my office with her and we tend to walk together on most things. Cat, this is Kara. She’s Clark’s cousin,”. Lois explained for no real reason, she’d already told Cat at three in the morning on the day Kara arrived when she asked her to cover her work. She knew Cat knew. 

“Are you named after the animal?” Kara was talking before Lois could register it, “Or are you the animal?” Kara went on. Cat didn’t seem to put up the normal walls though, crouching in front of Kara. 

“It’s short for Catherine, but no one calls me that,” she smiled. “You know, I have a son a little younger than you,” she went on. God, Lois wanted to ignore her. There was a part of her that wanted Kara to hate her but instead, she moved out from behind Lois’ leg a little. She really wanted to hate Cat. 

“His name’s Carter and he struggles with the world too, it’s a scary place,” Lois looked down to see Kara nodding in agreement. Her daughter - daughter, could she say daughter, that was a thing for another time. Her daughter couldn’t like her ex-girlfriend more than her husband. 

“When it gets too scary he just plays with one of these,” Cat was digging about in her bag and she handed something to Kara before straightening up as the doors slid open. 

“Thank you,” Kara was smiling, studying the thing in her hand. It seemed to distract her from the wall of noise that was slamming into them. Lois took a deep breath and followed Cat out, she was looking at Lois expectantly. They weaved through all the desks to their office where Lois could shut the door. 

“So where’s the husband?” Cat smiled as the door shut. 

“Already here,” Lois sighed. She didn’t have to look so smug about it. Lois helped Kara to sit on her chair, still distracted by what Cat had given her, some kind of fidget toy. 

“Don’t say you took the subway into work then?” Cat looked disgusted as she handed Lois a load of papers, all covered in sticky notes. Lois flipped through them, Cat had covered all of her workload. She really wanted to hate her. 

“Have you tried driving in this city?”. 

“No, I have a driver for that,” Cat laughed, “I’ll pick you up tomorrow,” she shrugged. Really really wanted to hate her.

“You don’t have to,” Lois smiled. 

“I know I don’t but I am,” she insisted, Lois knew there was no point fighting her. 

“Thank you,” she eventually settled on as she read through the papers, “For everything,” she added and looked up. She shouldn’t have looked up at Cat. Their eyes actually met. Green on brown. Cat swallowed and Lois felt the papers slip in her hand a little. It was the bang of them meeting the desk that snapped them both out of it. 

“How’s Carter?” Lois found herself asking. 

“Not that good actually. Ben and I are getting a divorce,” Cat spoke as she sat down in her chair. Lois shouldn’t have felt happy, she disguised it with some shock. 

“We both knew it was coming, don’t pretend you’re surprised but he was more of a dick about it than I expected,”. Lois could practically see Cat’s walls go up, she was never going to get how she was feeling out of her. “Carter overheard him say he wanted nothing to do with Carter,” Cat sighed. 

Lois felt shit. She had forgotten to check in on Cat. She had done all of this work and was going through a divorce (whether that was for the best or not). “You should’ve said,”. 

“Alien adoptive daughter and uninterested husband sounded like a bigger thing,” Cat smiled softly. 

“You’re getting a divorce,” Lois sighed, picking up Kara onto her lap and sitting down again, “Why?” she asked. 

“Neither of us were ever particularly faithful,” Cat murmured, focusing on work apart from a split second where she looked up at Lois with that look. 

“Yeah,” Lois breathed. She could never be more grateful for the very impressionable alien child in her lap otherwise she might already be pushing Cat against the wall They both knew that look, except Lois, hadn’t seen it since Carter. 

“Hi,” Clark’s voice cut through the air. 

“Hi,” Lois smiled, spinning her chair to face him. Kara didn’t look up except to desperately grab the pad she was writing on. Kryptonian symbols filling the page. Lois prayed Clark wouldn’t see it, he was on a mission to stop all Kryptonian. Something deeply ironic considering he was Metropolis’ biggest alien advocate as Superman.

“Hi Kal,” Cat smiled smugly from her desk and Clark spun to face her as Kara looked up with some recognition. 

“Who are you talking to?” he asked pointedly before turning to Kara, “How are you doing kid?” he smiled. 

“I remember when you would cry because you didn’t have your precious blanket. Don’t call me kid,” Kara pouted and Lois watched out of the corner of her eye as Cat’s face lit up and she leant forward on her hand. 

“What do you mean, Kara?” she smiled. 

“I’m older than him by five years. I just got stuck in a place where time doesn’t move,” Kara shrugged. 

“Intriguing,” Cat bit her lip as she leant back in her chair while Clark looked like he was ready to whip off his glasses and just turn her to dust. 

“When he was a baby he refused to go anywhere without his blanket. It’s no surprise it now flies behind him all the time,” Kara mumbled as she went back to writing. 

Cat’s face lit up as she realised what Kara was saying. “Your cape is a baby blanket,” Cat laughed, turning to Clark. 

“Bossman wants to see you,” he turned to Lois before finally catching what Kara was doing, “And you should be practising English,” he added to Kara before turning on his heel and leaving. 

“Maybe you should learn Kryptonian,” Kara muttered underneath her breath and by the stiffening of Clark’s back as he walked away, he heard her. 

“Do you want to stay here with me and tell me what you’re writing about, maybe?”. Lois heard Cat’s voice in the background as she watched Kal walk away. She was going to need a different office. How could she hate her?

* * *

Somehow, something meant that Perry didn’t yell at her. He just said to make sure Lois didn’t overload herself with work, not the response she was expecting but the response she wanted. No one could really have a go at her. Kara had a very sad fake backstory and an even sadder real one. 

When Lois got back to the office, the day got worse again though, or better. It depends whether you consider a rush of feelings for your ex-girlfriend who is currently going through a divorce a good thing. Could she even call Cat her ex-girlfriend? 

There was the dating when they just got out of university but that was a secret and the most torturous long-distance thing Lois had done. Then there was the affair when Cat started at the Planet. The two of them plucky interns and Cat already married, so it was still a secret. Then that stopped as Lois started to date Clark and Cat remarried again to Carter’s father, Ben. Then there was that small lapse, a couple of weeks when Lois and Clark had just broken up and then another after Cat discovered she was pregnant with Carter. That was one night where Lois had felt most guilty but Cat had shown and then one thing led to another and Cat ended up confessing her pregnancy through tears lying next to Lois on the bed. She stayed over for a few days after that, just until Clark came back from his trip. 

Then there was nothing. Lois married Clark a year later and they both moved on. Okay, Lois still had feelings for Cat but nothing could never happen and Clark made her happy. Then three weeks ago it was like her whole world shifted, it was like she didn’t even know Clark anymore. 

He basically abandoned Kara and left it all to Lois. Well, after he refused to let her speak Kryptonian there was an argument and Lois took over. But he let her. He didn’t care about Kara at all and Lois was starting to think that might be the deal breaker but to break the deal would be to lose Kara. It might only be the fourth week of knowing her but somehow her heart was so full of love for that tiny alien that was right now talking to Cat in a way Lois had never seen her talk to anyone else other than Lois herself. It was Cat’s distinct ability to disarm everyone as long as she wanted to. 

Lois walked into her office, finally. Kara was talking about how weird she found Earth in English confidently. A surge of pride flooded Lois’ veins and then a surge of affection, she wanted to ignore who it was for, she tried desperately to ignore who it was for. That was a problem for another day. 

* * *

Turns out suppressing everything for another day was not Lois’ best idea. Somehow she managed to spend more time with Cat than ever before. Perry was giving them assignment after assignment together. Thank god for the small alien buffer otherwise, Lois had no idea what she would be doing. Cat would pick Lois and Kara up with Carter usually in the car and drop them off after she had swung by to pick up Carter from daycare. It felt too comfortable, too domestic. Especially how Kara and Carter got on. That surprised both Lois and Cat. 

The first time they were both happy to ignore each other out of shyness and fear but shy waves when they picked Carter up that day gave way to a simple ‘hello’ the next morning which led to a full conversation where Carter explained what school was to Kara that evening during which Lois could’ve sworn Cat’s jaw almost fell off from hanging open. That leads to conversation after conversation. It was the first time Lois heard Carter truly talk about Krypton. 

When Lois considered it, it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise. Two lost souls completely overwhelmed by the world around them but with a unique desire to understand it all, the only difference was the age. Maybe Carter felt like an alien more than Lois could consider. 

Then there was everything else Cat did. Lois constantly found herself watching the blonde (completely oblivious to the fact that the blonde would do the same). The way Cat would push her glasses onto her face as soon as she became serious and was about to write but as soon as she would talk they would come off and her eyes lit up as she began to largely sass everyone around her into submission. Somedays Lois swore Perry was scared of her. The way that when she saw Carter her whole body would relax and her face would always split into a smile, even if it was just the photos littered across her desk. 

Denying the affection existed was probably Lois’ worst decision because then she wasn’t suppressing it, just pretending it wasn’t there when it was. Maybe if she would have acknowledged it she could have handled it but by the end of her first week back she’d watched Kara become fast friends with her ex-girlfriend’s son as her husband pushed both her and Lois away with continued bans on speaking Kryptonian and letting Kara pray to Rao. Something Lois fought vehemently for. 

But she didn’t want to fight. 

Maybe that’s why over the fortnight as they slipped into their new routine, Lois found herself slipping into old ones. It was just a pack of M’n’Ms to begin with, placed on Cat’s desk with all the yellow ones eaten. She hated the yellow ones and in all honesty, Lois probably needed to find some willpower. After that came their usual dialogue, the little conversations you’d always have on repeat. Cat started asking Lois where her glasses were again instead of the old habit of just turning over everything. 

Lois answered normally the first time but she fell the second, moving them around as Cat looked just to tease her, a prank she used to play far too often. Unfortunately, Cat didn’t use the sit on Lois’ lap and kiss her method to get her glasses back anymore; although after one on a particularly eventful Thursday, which meant Kara had already fallen asleep on the couch, Cat somehow ended up in Lois’ lap after she slipped grabbing for them. It was just brushed off. It was nothing. It’s always nothing. Then the trust she found herself placing in Cat. It was far too familiar. She would prefer to leave Kara with Cat more so than Clark. Kara was loving Lois’ work, or so it seemed. One thing Lois hated to admit was that she would have very little idea when Kara is lying. 

Kara would light up when they were in the office and she seemed to get on with everyone. It was weird though, she let everyone refer to her as Lois Lane’s daughter but as soon as Clark Kent’s son slipped from their mouths Kara didn’t take any of it. 

In all honesty, for Kara, Lois’ job was awesome. She could learn so much English and so much culture. It’s like newspapers have knowledge of a whole planet. She could read through it all and learn so much and people would answer every one of her questions, no matter how weird. 

Then there was Cat. She wasn’t the animal. She was a person and a pretty awesome person and her son was very fun to talk to. He was as weirded out by Earth as Kara and he liked science and he was telling her all about comic books, they were cool. They had people who could fly in there too, they were kind of like her and Carter. Strangers to the world around them and lost in its maze. 

Cat was her favourite person (apart from Lois) at CatCo though. She would listen to everything in every language and give Kara food. Even those coloured chocolate circles she wouldn't even let Lois eat. It was unusually comfortable. Kara guessed she liked Earth a little. Sometimes she would even forget what happened to Krypton and then she would remember but Lois was always there then.

She was always there, wrapping her arms around Kara. She was like her Jeju and her Ukr rolled into one. She even learnt Kryptonian for Kara and she could always make her laugh. On Earth, they called it a Mom, like Cat was to Carter. He called her Mommy. 

She had to admit life on Earth could be worse. It wasn’t perfect but she could learn to call it home maybe. It didn’t feel like home yet, she still felt so tethered to a lost planet. A dead planet. She didn’t just want to think of it as space dust. 

For Lois, it was a little different. Life could be better. Her marriage was falling apart, but she didn’t care much about that, it wasn’t her fault. It was him, he was making himself unloveable but then she did the one thing she knew she should never do. 

It had started with Lionel Luthor. The shock car crash death that shook Metropolis to its core. His wife, son and daughter are the survivors. Lillian, Lex and Lena. Lena was only Kara’s age. Losi got the investigation after Perry had confiscated it from Clark for refusing to waiver from his idea that it was Lillian’s plot, she might be Superman’s arch-nemesis, it doesn't mean she wants to kill her husband. So Clark actually volunteered to take Kara home and Ben had agreed to spend time with Carter and Cat claimed she needed a distraction as she stayed in that little glass office with Lois both of them staring at the whiteboard with the timeline of events and profile of Lionel Luthor. 

Lionel fucking Luthor. Couldn’t the person who employed the person who ploughed that car into his just have made it harder for Cat to solve it so she didn't do that cute fistbump of the air and a high-five to Lois. A rare Cat Grant display of emotion that somehow ended them with them standing centimetres away from each other, filling each other’s space, breathing each other’s air. 

“Lois,” Cat’s voice was a small whisper encased in a vulnerability Lois was all too familiar with. 

“Cat,” she found herself replying, somehow stepping closer. They still weren’t touching by something attached to them, a gravitational field pulling Lois closer and closer, an invisible strength that tied them together. 

Cat took a deep breath and her mouth parted, a tongue darting out to wet her lips. Lois found herself swallowing as she looked at the woman in front of her. 

“You’re married,” Cat whispered, she didn’t want to ask, she didn’t want to give that much up so instead she just stated the fact they both knew was the biggest barrier. Lois knew what she was asking. 

“And?” Lois found herself saying, “Has a marriage ever stopped us before?”. She watched as Cat relaxed a little, as much as you could, and her face lit up with a smile. Lois missed that smile, she moved forward and reached her hand to cup her face, her hand under her chin as a thumb ran over Cat’s lips, over her smile. 

Someone surged forward, it might have been both of them, but their lips were pressed together and Lois fell into the familiar feel, losing herself in Cat as a hand found her hip and tugged her closer, the other one threading into her hair. Lois found hers in Cat’s hair too, holding her close as she pushed her against the desk and then lifted her onto it with a sigh into Cat’s mouth. 

It was so much better when you didn’t fight. 

Until it wasn’t. 

The lights in the rest of the office switched on just as Cat pulled Lois’ hair out of its ponytail. Both of them stopped and stepped back. Maybe you shouldn’t think either, because then Lois released what she was doing and Cat realised the same. They promised each other never again. 

“I should go check on Kara,” Lois found herself saying. 

“Yeah, Carter,” Cat agreed absentmindedly as they both put everything back and grabbed their bags, running out. 

Lois took the subway. 

Kara was asleep when she got home. Clark left as soon as she got in. 

Lois knew one thing. Cat was the most addictive drug on Earth and she couldn’t keep going back. Drugs are bad.  _ Don’t do drugs. Stay in school.  _ It’s the one thing you’re always taught. Of course, Lois has to go fuck it up. 

She grabbed a glass of wine and went out onto the balcony, taking her phone as she did, and calling her sister. Lucy was good at saying it as it is.

“A Luthor died yesterday Lois, we’re a bit busy,” Lucy answered curtly as soon as she picked up the phone. Lois could hear noise in the background but it wasn’t the noise of a busy Federal Agency, or as Lois knew it best: the noise of her childhood, it was music. 

“Liar,” Lois scoffed as she heard a woman’s voice in the background, “You’re on a date,”. 

“You should be the one working with dad,” her sister sighed and the background music faded, she must have gone outside, “What do you want anyway?”.

“Oh no,” Lois laughed, “You’re telling me about your girlfriend,”. Lucy had referred to her for months but Lois still didn’t know her name. 

“Didn’t you want something,” Lucy groaned. 

“Yeah, your girlfriend’s name,”. 

“I’m hanging up,”. 

“Okay,” Lois sighed, “Something happened with Cat. I’ll tell you if you tell me her name,”.

“For fuck’s sake,”. Lois could feel Lucy’s exasperation through the phone. She fell silent on the other end, Lois could hear her breathing, deep breaths. 

“Her name’s Kelly,” Lucy sighed, “And she works with me. Now how did you fuck up this time and please say it didn’t involve actual fucking,”. 

“No,” Lois swallowed, leaning against the balcony, “It didn’t get that far,”. 

“You’re going to have to tell the story, sis,”. Lois took a long drink of wine before she launched into an explanation of the past two weeks. God, she couldn’t even last two weeks without screwing everything up. 

“You know you never got over Cat,” Lucy concluded as soon as Lois finished.

Lois went to object but her sister wouldn’t let her, “You never felt about Clark like you did about Cat. There was just so much more emotion with Cat, whether that was good or bad,”. 

“What do I do?” Lois didn’t want the lecture again. Lucy had made the point of telling her that Clark was wrong for her at every passing moment. The ‘told you so’ was coming soon, Lois could feel it. 

“You already know,” Lucy shrugged, “Everyone already knows, they’re just scared to do it,”. 

“I’m meant to be the smart older sister with the wise words of wisdom,” Lois laughed lightly. 

“Well, I’m just naturally awesome. You know I got Mom’s genes,”. Lois could hear her smug smile. 

“Don’t you have a girlfriend, called Kelly who works with you, to be getting back to?” Lois smiled, spinning around on the balcony to look back into the apartment. Kara was coming out of her room. Lois started to walk towards her, leaving her glass of wine on the coffee table. 

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked softly, deflecting Lois’ question. 

Lois reached Kara and crouched down, picking her up into a hug with one arm and pressing a kiss to her temple. 

“I will be,” she smiled, “Have fun,”. 

“You too, sis,” Lucy laughed as she hung up. 

Lois threw her phone to the couch and looked at Kara, her head was buried in Lois’ shoulder. “What happened, sweetie?” she whispered, stroking Kara’s hair as she adjusted her weight. 

“Bad dream,” Kara mumbled. Lois wished she could tell her it was just her imagination. 

* * *

She finished the article on Sunday and it was back to work by Monday. Cat had only texted her once all weekend and just to let her know that she would still be picking Lois up but for Carter and Kara, and no other reason. She made that very clear. 

So on Tuesday Lois wrote an article and didn’t think about Cat unless she had to and on Wednesday she took Kara on a Metropolis tour while out on an investigation and didn’t think about Cat and on Thursday she took Kara to Big Belly Burger and watched her joy as she tried a burger, milkshake and fries for the first time and definitely didn’t think about how it was Cat’s favourite comfort food whenever she was feeling good about her body and on Friday she sat opposite Cat all day trying to find a scandal in her very boring article and definitely didn’t think about how good her she looked at that moment because she didn’t think about Cat unless she had to. 

Instead, Lois focused everything on Kara and watched as she became more and more homesick, reality setting in a little in the worst way possible. No one wants to realise their whole planet blew up with everyone they ever loved. That was a horrible reality. Kara needed a taste of home, something to ease the pain and there was one place, she just needed Clark for it. 

She made sure Kara was passed out, properly asleep before she asked him. She walked into the kitchen slowly to find him on a laptop, typing away. He looked up and smiled a quick smile, Lois offered him one back and went to get a glass of water before taking the chair opposite him. The house was so quiet, every movement sounded three hundred times louder. 

“Is she asleep?” he asked, barely looking up. 

“Yeah,” Lois breathed before taking another deep breath. “I think you should take her to the Fortress,”. 

Clark's laptop lid slammed shut and he looked up at Lois in complete disbelief. “What?”. 

“She’s homesick,” Lois sighed, “That’s the closest thing to home,”. 

“It’s full of dangerous things,” Clark argued, his voice raised a little. 

“She’s a sensible kid. She’s smarter than any other five-year-old I know,”. 

“How many five-year-olds do you know?”. 

“She learnt a language in three weeks,”. 

“She’s still not perfect in it,”. 

“It is only her fifth week here,”. 

“Can’t be that smart then,” Clark laughed, standing up and going to the balcony. 

“No. Not now,” Lois made it there before, by some miracle, “We’re talking about Kara,”. 

“I never asked for any of this,” Clark fell into one of the couches. 

“Neither did I but she’s a five-year-old girl who just watched her planet explode,” Lois sighed, “And you cousin. What did you want to do?”. 

“Lucy could have organised something. We have no idea what we’re doing,”. 

“When do parents have any idea what they’re doing?” Lois sighed, starting to pace up and down. If he weren’t invincible she might punch him. 

“We’re not her parents,”. 

“You brought her here. What did you want to do?”. 

“You kept her,”. 

“She’s not an object, Clark,” Lois stopped pacing and turned to face him, “She’s a person with feelings and opinions,”. 

“What about my opinion?” Clark hissed, interrupting Lois, “She’s just here knowing everything about our planet, our home and speaking the language I’m meant to speak and I know nothing,”. 

“So you’re insecure,” Lois laughed, out of anger and frustration more than anything. She rounded the sofa and took a seat in front of him. “And jealous,”. 

Clark just looked at her at a loss for words. 

“You’re not,” Lois laughed lightly, “You’re not talking to your cousin at all because she knows more about Krypton than you and you’re jealous and feel insecure about not knowing anything,” Lois didn’t even know what she was saying at this point. Outrage and disbelief were consuming her. 

“For fuck’s sake,” she muttered.

“I’m allowed feelings,” Clark pouted like a five-year-old who had been told they couldn’t have the sweets they wanted. 

“You are,” Lois tried to become more measured. Someone had to be an adult. “You also need to learn not to let them consume you and destroy people’s lives. She wants to know you Clark. She really does,”. 

“Fine,”. 

“What?” Lois sighed. 

“I’ll take her to the stupid fortress,”. 

“Thank you,” Lois breathed, standing up. “I’m going to bed,”. 

“Are you going to sleep in our room anytime soon?” Clark called after her. 

“Is that an offer to swap for the night?” Lois smiled, spinning around to face him. 

“She likes you better,” he muttered, crossing his arms and leaning back in the chair. 

Lois shook her head and carried on to the bathroom and all she felt was nothing for her husband but anger. She had no idea how to love him. 

“When should I do it?” Clark’s voice carried through the bathroom door. 

“Tomorrow’s Saturday. Bring lunch,” Lois smiled, turning on the tap before he could object and drowning any objections out. 

“Are you coming?” he called over it. Lois sighed, turning the tap off. She had to go investigate a power plant at some point and she couldn’t take Kara there. She was going to ask Cat but she didn’t want to. Lois opened the door with a smile. 

“I have that power piece to do,”. 

“I don’t know why you think there’s a scandal in everything,” Clark sighed. 

“I’m an investigative journalist. I investigate,” Lois smiled proudly, before shutting the door in his face. God, it was satisfying. 

When she crept into Kara’s room that night and settled down onto the air mattress it sank again a few seconds later and a tiny hand was trying to lift her arm up. Lois cracked an eye open to see Kara staring back at her with her wide innocent eyes and smiled. Lois may never understand her love for that tiny little girl so quickly, she had a way of worming into Lois’ heart. Lois sat up and pulled Kara into her arms before standing up and taking Kara with her as she laid down on her bed. 

“G’night,” Kara mumbled sleepily, settling on Lois’ chest. 

“Goodnight, sweetie,” Lois whispered back, stroking a hand through Kara’s hair. 

* * *

Flying was an awesome, amazing, marvellous, brilliant, show-stopping, unbelievable, flawless, excellent, sensational experience that Kara could only dream of repeating. Okay, maybe that side of… Kara couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Iceberg? Mountain? Glacier? It was cold there anyway but then Kal picked up that huge key and the door opened and it got better. 

It was like a mini-Krypton. Like Argo. Like the view from her bedroom window. 

Kara just stopped in the doorway, her breath knocked out of her. 

“Kalex helped design it,” Kal’s voice boomed from behind her. She missed Lois a little. Maybe a lot. Then she registered Kal’s words. 

“Kalex is here!” Kara spun around to face her cousin. 

“ _Right here,_ kir chahv _(little one)_ ,” the familiar voice and language rang in Kara’s ears and she spun around to see the floating robot. 

“Kalex!” she found herself laughing, throwing her arms around the service bot. 

“Hello, Kara Zor-El,” he spoke as he moved away from her a little. Kara took a step back and looked up and around the fortress, as Kal had called it. It was amazing. It felt like home especially with the red light flooding the caverns. She felt a tug by something to look around and she started to run in the direction of the nearest archway. It was time to explore. 

  
Just as she reached the archway there was a yell behind her. “Kara! Not without me!” Kal yelled and she turned to see him chasing after her.

She really missed Lois. 

* * *

Lois wasn’t having much of a better day. The security guards were pricks to start with. Okay, she wasn’t meant to be going in but her story was way more convincing than the way they acted. But she finally got in and then found out she was right. It would be fun to be wrong for once. There’s so little work in it. But her ego was at the perfect size at the moment. It would be less fun with the loss, people wouldn’t be scared of her and approachable wasn’t really Lois’ aim at this point in her life. It was so much effort. 

She then got back to the office. A Saturday. It was deserted so she got her whiteboard and began to plan and then began to type and it felt so good and she wrote so much and it read really well and she was super productive and tidied her desk and she was done by lunch. That was not the aim at all. 

So Lois wrote articles for the next week and planned more and came up with a million ideas and tidied Cat’s desk the way she liked it and then other peoples and then ate more food in a corner before finally submitting to the fact she should probably go home. 

When she got back, Kara and Clark weren’t there. A large part of Lois hoped that Clark had grown fond of Kara. Then she got his text. 

* * *

Kara had explored every inch of the Fortress and now she was spending her time exploring everything again. Clark just watched. He couldn’t understand her at all. How come she got everything and he got nothing? She knew his parents and he never did. She calls his dad ‘Jorry’ because she can because he knew her. She could speak Kryptonian and she knew how to pray. Clark didn’t know who Rao was. 

She was so happy though and for some reason and a part of himself still resented that. Maybe it was a large part. 

He had to make her eat lunch at one point. That’s where she was truly Kryptonian but Clark still felt out of it. Kalex could talk to her in her language. It wasn’t his language, he’d never been able to speak it. He felt so human next to that little girl, it was so demeaning. 

“Can I sleep here?” Kara piped up. It was getting toward late evening and she’d just spent the last hour or so watching the sunset through the door, not moving no matter how hard Clark tried to move her. His first instinct was to say ‘no’ but he could already see Lois’ disapproving look in his mind’s eye. 

“Let me text Lois,” he sighed and Kara’s eyes lit up with her smile. 

**Clark:** Kara’s asking if she can sleep at the fortress. 

Lois’ reply was immediate. 

**Lois:** What are you asking me? 

**Clark:** Can she? 

**Lois:** If you’re going to stay with her. 

Clark sighed and looked back up at Kara and her smile. 

“We can stay,” he sighed. 

“Thank you,” Kara laughed, running past him back into the Fortress. “Kalex!” she called. 

  
“Where are you going?” Kal called after her. 

“To find out if we can see Krypton in the lights in the sky!” 

“They’re called stars,”. 

“Krypton’s a planet so it’s on rotation,” Kara stopped and turned to face him with a very Lois ‘told you so’ look. 

“Go find out then,” he prompted, starting to chase after her and regretting the red sun lamps, no matter how at home it made Kara feel. 

* * *

Lois sighed and threw her phone down after the text exchange before looking around the apartment and picking up again, calling the local takeaway with her usual order before grabbing a set of keys to go out and pick it up. She was starting to remember why she hated being single. She missed Kara, even more, when she had to take the five orders of potstickers off the usual order. 

It was when she was grabbing that bag from the counter and thanking Annabel, the girl who always worked the register, that her phone rang. Lois almost dropped her food as she adjusted her bags to pick it up, barely having any time to screen the call before clicking accept. 

“Can I come over?” it was a familiar voice, close to breaking point, sounding like she was barely holding back tears. 

“Yeah, Kara and Clark are away,” Lois looked down at the bag, she’d bought too much Chinese anyway. “What happened?”. 

“I’ll explain in ten minutes when I get there,”. 

“Okay,” Lois breathed, already turning into the closest bodega and grabbing some ice cream and M’n’Ms. This sounded bad. 

“Can you stay on the phone?” Cat’s voice was so uncharacteristically small. 

“Of course,” Lois smiled as she walked back out of the bodega and made a beeline for her apartment. 

“I have Chinese, ice creams and M’n’Ms. Do I need anything else?” Lois broke the silence on the line. 

“You don’t need to have all that,”. 

“I think I do,” Lois laughed, as she walked into her building and started up the stairs, “Where’s Carter?”. 

“Not yet,”. 

“I have alcohol too,” Lois offered with a smile, pressing her lips together.

“You’re amazing,” Cat mumbled quietly at the other end. 

“I know,” Lois laughed, trying more than anything to cheer Cat up as she made it into the apartment. 

“Of course you do,” Lois could have sworn she heard a hint of a laugh in Cat’s voice as she moved it onto speaker mode so she could lay out all of the food and put the ice cream in the freezer. Cat had fallen silent on her end except for the traffic of the city in the background. 

Lois told herself it was because of the background noise on the phone that she knew when Cat was at her door and when to buzz her up but she really didn’t know what it was. She just pressed the button and heard Cat thank her on the other end. Cat was up in less than a minute and Lois opened the door to see a ghost of the woman she knew. 

“He’s suing me for full custody after I supposedly breached the deal we reached by not letting him see Carter two weekends in a row,” Cat sighed, leaning against the doorframe like everything had been taken out of her, “And he says he’ll keep Carter till it’s resolved,”. 

“Wasn’t he off fucking blonde bimbo number nineteen last weekend?” Lois looked at Cat. 

“His word against mine and blonde bimbo number nineteen is very hard to track down,” Cat let Lois bring her into the apartment, “Carter hates being at his dad’s,”.

“I know,” Lois passed Cat the M’n’Ms before forcing her onto the sofa and taking a seat next to her. Cat tucked her legs underneath her and turned to face Lois. 

“I can’t-” Cat started, cutting herself off and avoiding Lois’ gaze, her settling on the food and she left the M’n’Ms in favour of her favourite noodles in the middle of the layout and something Lois notoriously despised. She reached forward for it and a fork and passed Lois her favourite thing, just next to it. 

“Thank you,” Lois whispered quietly, still waiting for Cat to finish her thought. 

“Not after-” Cat started again, fiddling with the fork in her hand. They both knew what she wanted to say.

Adam. 

Lois knew the story better than most. A university hook-up with an older student gone wrong and a messy fallout where he got full custody and moved far away, giving Cat very little access to her own son. She never talked about him but the one time she told Lois the story but he was always on her mind. 

“I know,” Lois whispered into the heavy silence, “You don’t need to explain,”. 

“I know I’ve been shit this week but I just-”. 

“You don’t need to explain,” Lois insisted, trying with everything not to look up at Cat. Every part of her reached out to the woman, she wanted to lean forward and bring her close and hold her there and never let go and shield her from all the pain and hurt of the world but she couldn't so she just leant forward and clicked on the TV, switching straight to the politics channel and turning to Cat with a smile. 

“Want to yell at some idiots?”. 

“Always,” Cat laughed. It was a long time of getting their anger out that had begun by coincidence after Cat got the politics beat and ended as a way to spend random Saturday nights, seeing who could create the most creative insults for the politicians on TV. 

Two hours later, the Chinese were gone and it felt oddly familiar as they yelled through mouthfuls of ice cream and M’n’Ms. They’d shifted naturally closer together and Lois found herself with Cat’s arm wrapped around her after Cat had stolen a mouthful of her ice cream. I felt when they were young again. They were both laughing at their own idiocy and Lois felt ridiculously relaxed. 

“I missed this,” Cat whispered quietly as another ad break popped up. 

“Me too,” Lois smiled. The quiet acknowledgement hung in the air as Cat lifted the ice-cream point out of Lois’ hand and onto the table and they turned to face each other slowly.

Lois didn’t know who kissed who but Cat’s lips were on hers and it was slow, desperate, passionate and loving all at the same time and Lois was kissing back with the same fervour and all she could think was Cat. Everything left her mind as she melted into the familiarity and pushed Cat back onto the couch. 

At some point in the night, she felt Cat leave with a quick, chaste kiss and a whispered goodbye. They both knew Clark would be back at some point. They both knew she had to go. It felt different than other times they both knew she had to go through. It didn’t feel like an end. It felt like a beginning. 

“Morning,” a small whisper in Lois’ ear was what woke her up. She cracked an eye to see Kara standing by her head, “You know you’re not meant to sleep on the couch,”. 

“It’s as comfy as a bed,” Lois mumbled sleepily, wrapping her arms around Kara as she climbed onto the sofa next to her before pulling the blanket over the two of them, “How was the Fortress?”. 

“It was amazing,” Kara laughed, beginning to launch into a whole explanation that had Lois sitting up so she could watch Kara explain properly, moving opposite as she flowed between Kryptonian and English to say everything she wanted to. 

Lois looked over Kara’s head to see Clark coming out of the bedroom and for some reason, she felt guilty for not feeling guilty. He was already in his super suit though and he left off the balcony without even a second look at Lois, or maybe it was Kara he was ignoring. 

“Oh, and Mom,” Kara tapped Lois’ knee with a huge smile, bringing her away from Cla-. 

_ Oh, and Mom _

_ Oh, and Mom _

_ Mom _

The word played over and over in Lois’ head. Her heart started to beat out of her chest as she slowly focused on Kara, an expectant look on her face. 

“What is it, sweetie?” she didn’t know what said the words. Her heart was doing something that may be able to cause a heart attack and her brain was playing one word on repeat but she said them and then she tried to listen as Kara told her all about Argo City. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pls leave a comment if you like this and if you ever wanna chat you can hmu of tumblr or insta (@trixicbean for both)  
> hope you're all having an amazing day and thank you for being here  
> avery :)
> 
> p.s. lena is coming in next chapter and then it's going to be more kara/lena centric but this will be slowburn so slow you'll wonder if the stoves even on


	3. Feel None of It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you think we’ll ever have good timing?”. 
> 
> “I don’t think that’s us,” Cat looked over at Lois with a soft smile, before throwing the remote down and walking slowly over to Lois.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: there is EXTREME shortness in this chapter
> 
> Calista Flockhart (Cat Grant's) - 5 foot 5  
> Bitsie Tulloch (Lois Lane) - 5 foot 6  
> John Cryer (Lex Luthor) - 5 foot 9
> 
> when i say there is shortness i mean it in every single way possible. for reference melissa benoist is 5 foot 8 and gal gadot (wonder woman) is 5 foot 10

Somewhere for this, death and guns

We are deaf, we are numb

Free and young and we can feel none of it

_Sedated, Hozier_

* * *

It was a month since Kara had called Lois 'Mom' and life was good. 

Well, as good as it could be if Lois ignored the fact that she was definitely regularly cheating on her husband with her ex on a semi-regular basis and the fact that her husband was barely ever home because he despised his own cousin who had come to be her daughter. And that the woman she was cheating with was also going through (and winning) a custody battle with her ex over her son and that if they found out about the affair the woman she loved may lose custody of her son. 

Maybe, complicated was a better word. 

But Kara was good. She was thriving and taking Earth in her stride. Her English was becoming so seamless and fluent and she was starting to read books and she would smile so much more than she used to. The nightmares weren’t gone but Lois needed the excuse to sleep in Kara’s room anyway and she didn’t mind holding Kara each night. 

Lois had one regret, Kara didn’t know anyone else her age. Carter and Kara got along, surprisingly well, but he was two years younger. 

Then Kara Zor-El met Lena Luthor. 

Lena Luthor was decisively not the daughter of Lillian Luthor but she was very much the brother of Lex Luthor, aka ‘The Good Luthor’. Lillian was the evil one. Lionel was the corrupt and extremely ethically-ambiguous one (though largely just your typical ‘traditional values’ rich, straight, white, Christian, cis-gendered man who didn’t recognise his own privilege). 

Lex was different. First of all, Lois was 99.9% sure he was bisexual and secondly since taking over Luthor Corp, the biggest science and technology company on the planet, he had somehow already completely started to restructure it. The first big headline was the fact he improved all the contracts and took a pay cut (along with some other executives) to cover all the new policies which were quickly making Luthor Corp one of the most ethical businesses in the world and that’s without starting on the environmental and charity initiatives. 

Lillian had been blocking it every single step of the way though; well, she had been, before she disappeared a week ago. 

Since then there had been a string of alien disappearances across the city, an increase in crime and Clark hadn’t been home once. Lois had a feeling it was partly deliberate, something had shifted integrally after the Fortress. Clark felt like the roommate she barely ever saw instead of her husband and she felt indifferent toward it. He ignored Kara and Lois, it was like he just despised both of their presences. 

Lois thought, for just a moment, that Kara was bothered by Clark’s absence then she seemed to express the same indifference that Lois possessed. It quickly became that Clark was barely a part of her life, she slept in Kara’s room, they didn’t even share a bed anymore. It wasn’t a fight or anger or hate, it was just an eerie indifference. 

So he was gone and Lois didn’t notice except for the slightly more full fridge. For all Lois knew, he could be staying with James. James was just as pissed at Lois as Clark. Turns out the Kelly that Lucy was dating was his sister. A fact that Cat had been particularly insensitive about. She and Lucy were a dangerous pair when it came to winding up James Olsen. 

After an impromptu Lucy visit when James had discovered the fact; Lucy had taken to visiting more often, even taking a very excited Kara for milkshakes and burgers on random lunch breaks or showing up with the most sugary foods possible which seem to serve just one purpose of making a five-year-old hyper. Lucy just claimed to be fulfilling her rightful place as ‘Cool Aunt’. Lois was getting her baby sister back though, she didn’t care. 

But in the last week that had stopped too. Turns out a lot of crime is a bad thing for the secret service. All of Lucy’s energy moved to focus on that and the Daily Planet newsroom slowly became more and more chaotic until everyone left, each on a different assignment. 

That's why Cat, Lois, Kara and Carter ended up at Lex’s private penthouse apartment at midday on a Saturday. An assignment. 

It was the first time Lois had met the infamous Lena. 

Everyone in Metropolis knew about her. The poor kid from Ireland that managed to get lumped with Lillian as a step-mother. Maybe the step-mother wasn’t quite so common knowledge, but a few reputable sources had provided Lois with the information that Lena was biologically Lionel’s and her mother, an Irish woman, had died for them to take the girl in. Well, for Lionel to take her in, from the sounds of it Lillian didn’t want her. 

That’s why it wasn’t surprising that when they came in, Lois could only see the back of the little girl’s head as she disappeared into a hallway while Lex opened up the door for them.

“I’m so glad it’s you,” he laughed, there was more anxiety in it than happiness, “The others aren’t so sympathetic,”. 

“We just want the truth,” Lois heard Cat’s voice repeating her words as she spoke. She looked over for a second to see the blonde’s lips curl up in a small smile. 

“Come in,” Lex opened the door a little wider, “This must be Carter,” he looked at Carter, half-asleep in Cat’s arms. Carter just shifted a little, hiding his face in Cat’s neck. Lex didn’t seem phased, looking over to Kara, “So you must be Kara,” Lex smiled at the little girl gripping Lois’ hand, “Clark’s told me a little about you. I think you’ll like my little sister,” he smiled, crouching down to Kara’s height, “She’s the same age as you,”. 

Kara came out from behind Lois’ leg a bit and looked at Lex curiously, her eyes mainly focused on the top of his head. Lois prayed silently to God that Kara wouldn’t say anything.

“And she just came to live with us just like you, except she didn’t come from another planet, she came from a little place called Ireland, all the way on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean but I think she might be a little shyer than you,”. Kara looked at the man in front of her, he had a weirdly shiny head with no hair on it but a kind face and Losi trusted him.

Kara looked behind him into the apartment and saw a little girl, about the same height as she was, maybe a little shorter, with long, straight, brown hair and piercing green eyes and pale skin dotted across with little flecks of brown. In one hand she carried a book that looked like it was way too big and heavy for her to be carrying. She was walking toward Kara too with what Kara thought might be curiosity. 

“Hello,” Kara waved over at her as she drew nearer. 

“Hi,” she smiled, quietly, “I’m Lena,”. 

“Lena,” Kara tried the name, it was nice to say, “I’m Kara,”. 

“Hi Kara,” Lena smiled. 

“Do you need help with that book?” Kara found herself asking as she went up to her.

  
“It’s heavy,” the brunette warned, grunting a little as she adjusted it in her arms. 

“I can take it,” Kara took it from her hands just before it slipped out. It was an awkward shape but it wasn’t heavy. “What’s it about?”. 

“Everything. It’s an encyclopedia, but my favourite part is the science,”. 

“I love science,” Kara found herself admitting before she could stop herself. She wasn’t meant to tell people. It might give away that she was an alien but Lex knew, why wouldn’t Lena. 

“Really?” Lena’s disbelief brought Kara back to reality. 

“Yeah,” Kara found herself admitting, “On my home planet, Krypton, I was going to be the youngest member of the Science Guild,”. 

“Science Guild,” Lena asked and Kara found herself going to answer. 

“Why don’t you take Kara to your room?” the suggestion came from behind Kara and Lena. They forgot about the adults.

“This way,” Kara turned back to Lena, who was holding out her hand. Kara found her own slipping into it, adjusting the book so she could as Lena started to pull Kara to her room. 

Lena’s room was colourful yet simple. Her bed was pushed against a wall like in Kara’s room but unlike Kara’s the wall opposite was just lined with bookshelves that were filled floor to ceiling in books. Kara could only stare in awe. 

“I have to get Lex to help me with the ones on top but sometimes he’s not tall enough,” Lena’s voice broke through Kara’s thoughts and Kara spun around to face her. Almost falling over as she did as she tried to adjust to the extra weight of the book. 

“The bean bags are best to read on,” Lena suggested, pointing over at a weird blue lumpish thing in the corner of the room. “I’ll show,” she smiled before sprinting up to it and jumping with a spin in the air before she landed with a huge smile and a thumbs up. “See!”. 

Kara considered her options before walking over and passing Lena the book and then running back and trying herself. It was awesome. She sunk down into the beans? (Is that what Lena said) next to the brunette and it was the brunette who opened the book after putting it between them. 

“This is our solar system,” Lena murmured as Kara stared at the colourful spheres. Solar system, that was full of planets. Planets wouldn’t be that perfectly shaped. “Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune,” Lena pointed each of them out, “And then people really can’t decide whether Pluto is a planet or not,” she laughed, “But Venus is my favourite. It’s named by the ancient Roman goddess of love and beauty,”. 

“What are the others named after?” Kara smiled. 

“Mercury is a weird Latin translation from the Greek messenger god, Hermes, also the name of a package delivery company,” Lena laughed, “Earth just has a boring name,” Lena dragged out the ‘r’ in the name as she spoke and Kara found herself laughing a little. “Mars is named after the Roman god of war and Jupiter is the biggest planet so it was named after the King of the Roman gods then Saturn is just boring,” Lena smiled, saying the word in the same way as before. 

“It’s named after the god of agriculture,” her words dripped with her disapproval, “But Neptune was named after the Roman god of the sea and Uranus after the Greek king of the gods and Pluto after the Roman god of the underworld, which was their hell,”. 

Kara found herself filled with a desire to tell Lena about her solar system, “Our sun, Rao, was our God,” Kara spoke quieter than she expected to but Lena turned to her with a look of curiosity in her eyes so Kara found herself telling Lena all about it while Lena told her all about the space around Earth. 

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, somehow Lois had been lumped with the role of good cop in their interrogation polite conversation. It’s not like Cat was a bad bad cop or that Lois was a bad good cop but bad cop was so much more fun than good cop (it had nothing to do with the fact that Cat as bad cop was a little more than a little distracting to Lois). 

“You know we want to just ask you the nice questions especially considering everything that just happened,” Lois smiled gently at Lex, “We just need to cover all bases so we can show the public the truth we already know,”. She really had to desperately ignore the heel Cat was slowly dragging up her leg. 

“I know,” Lex smiled sympathetically, “I know you know I absolutely have no connection to my mother and no belief in any of the business my dad conducted,”. 

Lois was ready to ask another question, a softer one when something happened, something shifted. The sky changed colour. It was red. 

* * *

“So then the Egyptians built these huge triangular things,”. Kara barely listened to the words out of Lena’s mouth as she stared at the window. The sky changed colour. It was like home. 

“Like that,” Kara found herself saying, thinking back to when she tried to explain Krypton to Lnea. 

“What?” Lena asked and Kara could feel her gaze on her. 

“Krypton,” Kara breathed, pointing at the sky, “It looks like Krypton,”. It was Lena that stood up, putting the huge book to one side and went over to the window to look more closely. Kara followed her. 

“Has this ever happened before?” she asked. 

“Not in Ireland, I haven’t been in Metropolis long enough,” Lena shrugged. 

“Get away from the windows!” adult voices came bursting into the room and Kara found herself being picked up into familiar arms and carried out into the hallway. 

Kara looked around once they were in the hallway. Cat had Carter in her arms, Lex was holding Lena and she was being held by Lois. They were all speaking a language Kara couldn’t understand, a few words sounded similar to English but none were exactly the same. 

_“Lena speaks French,” Lex warned after Cat’s single words suggestion._

_“Spanish?” Cat tried in the language she was suggesting._

_“No,” Lex smiled, “Why do we need another language anyway?”._

_“Because we’re panicking and we don’t want the kids to panic,” Lois smiled, very fakely._

_“I think that smile alone will freak the kids out, beautiful,” Cat somehow managed to keep her voice unusually normal, it couldn’t be described as calm due to the fact that for some reason she was flirting but Lois just moved on and so did Lex, shaking his head with a little confusion._

_“This is you-know-who through and though,” he sighed._

_“Voldemort?” Cat laughed._

_“You know who I’m talking about,” Lex glared at her._

_“So it’s not some pollution thing?” Lois suggested but she just got looks of disbelief from the other two adults, “Covering all bases,”._

“It feels like Krypton too,” Kara faced Lena, breaking the silence between the children. 

_It would have been helpful if Lois listened to Kara’s words but she was distracted by Lex explaining he suspected Lillian had a plan like this, to make the yellow sun red and to render Superman useless._

“Did you have powers on Krypton?” it was Carter who asked. 

“No, it was just like being human,” Kara shrugged. Did she have powers on Earth? Maybe, her hearing was a little better. 

“So Superman is powerless,” Lena reasoned. 

_“How can we be sure that Lillian succeeded?” Cat questioned and everyone turned to Lois._

_“Because we’re on such great terms,” she muttered, reaching into her back pocket to pull out her phone and call her husband._

“He’s definitely powerless, right now,” Kara agreed with Lena. 

“How can you be sure?” Carter questioned and Kara just pointed at the sky, she was the only one facing that window. Sure enough, an image of a bloody Superman on the floor was being broadcast across the city. Carter and Lena followed her gaze. 

“Are you okay?” Lena turned back to Kara, “That’s your cousin,”. 

“Yeah,” Kara nodded slowly, in a little bit of shock. 

_“Voicemail,” Lois sighed, bringing the phone away from her ear and looking up to see the same image that Kara was seeing._

Cat followed Lois’ gaze as she noticed the brunette turn inexplicably pale. Lex turned just a second after. They all turned just as pale. 

“I just moved. No one knows where I live. My place is safe,” Cat whispered into the silence. 

“I have a car with bulletproof windows which I checked for trackers five minutes before you showed up,” Lex added. 

“Grab a change of clothes,” Cat smiled softly before turning to Lois. Lois looked at Cat, away from the screen. “Is there anything you need to pick up?” she asked. Kara couldn’t look away from the large billboard. 

_“Yeah, the blanket, some clothes and probably a lot of therapy,” Lois reverted back to Spanish._

“Kara?” Cat tried to get the attention of the child in Lois’ arms. Kara didn’t even hear the words but her question brought Lois’ focus back. 

“Kir chahv _(little one)_ ,” Lois moved to Kryptonian to try and get Kara’s attention. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what was going through her head, it looked highly likely that she was about to lose the last remaining member of the world she had lost just a few months ago. 

Kara turned to face Lois but Lois didn’t really know what to say. What words of comfort could you possibly give to someone who had lost so much so recently? 

“ _We’re just going to go to the Cat’s house, it’s safe,_ ” Lois explained, “ _We’ll pick up some stuff first though, don’t worry,_ ”. Kara just nodded and Lois pressed a quick kiss to her temple. 

“Ready to go,” Lex shouted, practically dragging Lena out of her bedroom, “With plenty of books already,” he added very pointedly, ignoring Lena’s pout. 

“Car’s this way,” he smiled to Cat and Lois, pressing a button on a car key which opened a hole in the wall to reveal a sleek black vehicle. 

“That’s so cool,” Carter breathed. 

“This feels like Bruce Wayne’s lair all over again,” Lois muttered, following them to the car. 

* * *

It was surreal. As they walked in everything clashed. The yellow light of the apartment with the red sun of the outside. Kara just wanted to close her eyes and pretend nothing was happening. Everything was normal. Whatever normal was. So she squeezed her eyes shut and pretended nothing ever happened. Nothing at all. 

It probably wasn’t the best idea to close her eyes while she was still walking into the apartment.

“We need to decide natural or artificial light,” she heard Lex say. 

“I’ll close the curtains,” it was Cat that responded and then she spoke again at a whisper, “You know where to put your stuff,”. 

“I know,” was Lois’ whispered reply. 

“Kara, are you okay?” she felt someone move closer to her, it was very obviously Lois. She heard the distinct sound of bags being placed on the ground. “Come here,” was the whisper and she was pulled into a hug, a hand being rubbed comfortingly across her back. Kara let herself relax and open her eyes as she buried her face in Lois’ neck away from the world. 

“That’s all the curtains,” Cat announced, largely for Carter who had squeezed his eyes shut like Kara but it applied to Kara too so she looked over Kara’s shoulder into the room, which looked a little more normal, scarily normal. 

“I’m going to put the bags away,” Lois stepped away, pressing a quick kiss to Kara’s temple. Kara just nodded and looked around the room as her Mom walked off. Lex was unpacking some food they had bought. Cat was walking off with Carter, into a room which had his name printed on the front. Carter looked about half asleep on her shoulder. 

Kara felt a little lost in the new space and Lena looked about the same, standing very close to the door too. 

“You know he’s fighting my stepmom,” Lena smiled. 

“What’s a stepmom?” Kara asked, turning to face Lena. 

“She married my now-dead dad. My actual Mam is dead too,”. 

“My parents are dead too,” Kara paused for a second, “Do you like your stepmom?”. 

“No,”. 

“You know she’s fighting my cousin,”. 

“Do you like your cousin?”. 

“I don’t know,” Kara sighed. 

* * *

“Why are all the movies here related to aliens?” Lois yelled over at Cat. 

“They are leftover from me trying to hint to you that I know that Clark Kent is Superman,” Cat sighed, they were trying to put a movie on to distract from the everything going on. 

“Which ones are they?” Lex asked, leaning over the top of the couch in between Kara and Lena. Lena was showing Kara one of her favourite books, Matilda. 

“Alien Autopsy, whatever that is. Then, Monsters vs. Aliens and E.T. as well as all six of the Alien Films and all of the Men in Black, both Space Odysseys, both Alien vs. Predators, all of Star Wars and Flash Gordons,”. 

“There are multiple Flash Gordons,” Lex asked confused. 

“Apparently,” Lois sighed.

“Is there Independence Day there?” Lex smiled. 

“Because that’s appropriate for children,” Cat threw a cushion at his head, “There should be Lilo and Stitch there,” she turned to Lois more softly. 

“Got it,” Lois smiled before opening it and sliding the disc into the slot. 

“Are you ready for an introduction to one of the best movies the world has to offer?” Lois smiled at Kara and both her and Lena looked up, discarding the book to one side. 

“Books are better,” Lena shrugged. 

“Give it a chance,” Lex laughed as the iconic castle panned into the screen. “We’re just going to check the news,” he added and if it weren’t for the fact their one aim was not to create panic, they would’ve run out of the room. 

Lex made some kind of crappy excuse to leave as soon as they made it to Cat’s study. Lois had no idea what he knew but she didn’t have the brain space to worry about it. Cat was silent for a moment after she pushed the door shut, keeping an uncharacteristically large space between the two of them, one reminiscent of when Cat had just gotten married and they were walking on eggshells. 

“I shouldn’t feel like this,” Lois found herself admitting, “He’s been hurt before and normally I’m mad and angry and worried and pacing up and down till I manage to imagine the worst-case scenario but I just feel so unbelievably indifferent to it, like I am just concerned for a friend that I know will be okay in the end and I shouldn't feel like this, I shouldn't, I shouldn’t because he’s my husband and I should care more than this,” Lois took a breath and let her head fall into her hands as she sat back against Cat’s desk, moving a photo to the side. 

She looked down at the photo. It was a very old one of her and Cat on a night out, just after they started their internships, from the look in Cat’s eyes when Lois looked back up at her, Cat knew exactly what Lois was looking at. 

“He just doesn’t make me feel anything anymore,” Lois admitted quietly, intently focused on the picture. That night was amazing. Cat crossed the room over to the brunette and sat back against the desk, looking over Lois’ shoulder. 

“What damage do you think she’s done?” she broke the silence, changing the subject. 

“I don’t know if I want to know,” Lois asked, glancing at the window. Cat reached behind Lois for the TV remote, pressing a quick kiss to Lois’ cheek as she did, before moving over to the couch so she could point the remote at the TV so the news flashed on to the screen. 

_Lillian Luthor attacks alien-allied areas on her mission to “control the city’s immigrant issues” after rendering Superman completely useful with her red sun device. Some believe it is part of her tactic to draw him out of hiding and recovery. No one has heard from Superman since his dramatic fall from grace this morning._

Lois gave Cat a look and Cat turned it off instantly. 

“I can’t get a divorce until I actually have grounds to get custody of Kara,” she sighed. 

“Kara comes first,” Cat agreed quietly. 

“Do you think we’ll ever have good timing?”. 

“I don’t think that’s us,” Cat looked over at Lois with a soft smile, before throwing the remote down and walking slowly over to Lois. Lois reached out a hand and pulled Cat in, wrapping her arms around Cat and looking at her. They were at the same eye level, a small rarity. 

“Good,” Lois smiled, before leaning in and capturing Cat’s lips in a chaste kiss. 

Stability in the chaos. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anygays, hope y'all are doing good and feeling well... i might get another chapter out this week or maybe next because it's half term
> 
> anyway, ummm i am also writing an EPQ for school at the minute and i need people to complete a [survey on LGBTQ+ representation in the media](https://forms.gle/V32Uo2V6Q5v1wKBC9) it's completely anonymous and i need people gay and straight to take it
> 
> also hmu up on [tumblr](https://trixicbean.tumblr.com/) or [insta](https://instagram.com/trixicbean?igshid=1u11polbc045h) if you wanna chat. i like people. 
> 
> avery :)


	4. Idealism Sits in Prison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A total of two hundred dead and three thousand injured. Metropolis was reeling in the aftermath of Lillian Luthor’s brutal attack. Of the two hundred dead, one hundred and fifty were of non-human descent, as the news channels were putting it, so it wasn’t like her rampage was unsuccessful. But the deaths were shown overshadowed by the dramatisation of Superman’s great return to the city after being gone for all of thirty-six hours because the news only truly cared about one alien person of non-human descent. With his return became the beginning of the great clean up and it turned out cleaning up the city was a very difficult job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are dangerously heavy levels of clark and lois angst at the end of this

Honey you're familiar like my mirror years ago

Idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on it's sword

Innocence died screaming, honey ask me I should know

I slithered here from Eden just to hide outside your door

_ From Eden, Hozier _

* * *

It was Batman who came to Metropolis’ rescue. After saving Superman, he disabled the red sun device, left Lillian Luthor dangling off a building where the police arrested her and then released a statement saying that Superman would be back in no time and all in a night’s work. 

After eating some food, Kara had fallen asleep almost immediately and Lena followed suit, staying in Cat’s spare room. Kara refused to leave Lois, as expected, but she didn’t wake up at all as the three adults watched it all unfold on the news. Clark only called once it was Bruce must have returned. 

“My phone wasn’t charged,” he said as soon as Lois answered, he was speaking loudly and Lois looked down at the sleeping Kara. 

“Whisper. Kara’s sleeping,” she warned and was about to ask him about why he didn’t borrow from Bruce Wayne’s never-ending technology question when he spoke again. 

“With you? Again?” he sighed disapprovingly. 

“Well, she saw that image and quite literally hasn’t said much at all since and I need her to get some sleep,” Lois hissed back, struggling not to raise her voice. Cat raised an eyebrow from the other side of the couch. 

“What image?” Clark asked, speaking more quietly. 

“An image of you lying on the floor covered in blood having fallen out of the sky under a red sun,” Lois sighed, “It’s all over the news along with Lillian Luthor’s destruction of the city and Batman’s amazing save,”. 

“Yet for some reason, you’re still with the Luthors,” Clark quipped back, barely restrained anger in his voice. 

“I’m with Lex and Lena. If you haven’t seen, Bruce hung Lillian from the top of a building and the police are currently trying to get her down,”. 

“You’re with Luthors,” Clark admonished his voice stern and cutting, the volume rising with less regard for Lois’ earlier warnings. 

“We can’t be seen to be with them. They are evil,” Clark insisted. 

“I have no responsibility for the idea of them that you created in your head, all I know that it is wrong,” Lois argued back at a low register, her voice soft and calm no matter the anger and annoyance she felt, “Kara is in the safest possible place right now and that is all that matters,” Lois felt like it was such a good finishing line it would be only fit to hang up. It would be so satisfying but she stayed on the call as Clark fumbled to find something to say. 

“She’s with a Luthor, nothing about that is safe,”. 

“We’re all running from the same people, there’s safety in numbers,” Lois slipped in her last word before he hung up on her. She let the phone drop to the couch next to her as she leant back against the couch, holding Kara close and pressing a kiss to the top of her head. 

Cat smiled at her from the other end of the couch, Lois just offered her a weak smile back. 

* * *

A total of two hundred dead and three thousand injured. Metropolis was reeling in the aftermath of Lillian Luthor’s brutal attack. Of the two hundred dead, one hundred and fifty were of non-human descent, as the news channels were putting it, so it wasn’t like her rampage was unsuccessful. But the deaths were shown overshadowed by the dramatisation of Superman’s great return to the city after being gone for all of thirty-six hours because the news only truly cared about one  alien person of non-human descent. With his return became the beginning of the great clean up and it turned out cleaning up the city was a very difficult job. 

Fortunately, The Daily Planet building was unaffected, a surprise due to the sympathetic alien narrative their publication usually used, but there was no spending anytime there; life became about making sure you had every single story from every single person ever affected by Lillian’s actions. Lois hadn’t seen the inside of the Daily Planet building since before the attack and it had been a week. 

She hadn’t seen many people in all honesty. Kara was it, Cat had been out on just as many assignments as Lois and Carter’s dad had skipped town, mumbling something about safety, so she was also juggling Carter, whose nursery had been destroyed in the attacks as it let alien children go there too. 

Clark, he was clearing everything up and juggling the reporting of it all. Though his last three articles all largely revolved around quotes from Superman. He had hardly been home and from the fleeting second Lois had spent talking to Jimmy Olsen, she understood he had been saying at the photographer’s place, but it wasn’t easy to get copious amounts of information out of the ex-boyfriend of your sister who was now dating his sister, that was not an easy job by any stretch of the imagination. She had seen him once since the attack, during his courtesy visit to show both Kara and Lois he was alive. 

Lucy, she was on clear-up too. The military coordinated efforts to put everyone in shelters, rebuild the city, redistribute food and water and to control the actions of the millions of looters taking advantage of the city’s vulnerable state. It meant their dad was in town too, leaving his usual hideout in Washington to help coordinate the soldiers and Lois couldn’t be more thankful for her busy schedule at that moment. It also meant she saw her sister; she always heard her sister though, banging on the door at seven o’clock at night and then pushing her way in mumbling about something their dad did and claiming her rightful place on the couch. 

As for Lex, from Lois’ correspondence with his assistant as they tried to set up an interview, he’d been in meeting after meeting. It wasn’t until day six post-attack, that she got in to see him, bringing Kara with her into his office. 

It was Lena who Lois clocked first as she walked in and it was obviously the first person Kara clocked too. She had been asking about seeing Lena again ever since they had left Cat’s apartment that next morning. Her face lit up and her hand slipped from Lois’ as soon as she saw her. Lena had her head buried in a book and she only saw Kara a second before Kara had climbed onto the couch next to her but her face mirrored Kara’s in the huge smile.

“Lena’s school was destroyed,” Lex offered as a way of explanation when Lois looked over to the man behind the desk. Was it possible for him to have lost even more hair? His stress was undeniable though, his face pale and huge bags under his eyes making it look like he hadn’t slept since the night before the attack because none of them slept the night of. 

“Now, I’m thinking I should have brought some coffee,” Lois joked as she took in his appearance, making her way over to the desk as he indicated for her to take a seat. 

“I’m on my fifth cup today, any more and my heart might give out,” Lex sighed, sitting back down in his chair, “I’m sure you’ve already seen where our stocks are at,”. 

Lois offered him only a weak smile as she nodded her head, “It might go up if Lillian gets behind bars,” she tried hopefully. 

It didn’t seem to help though as Lex shook his head, “She wants both Lena and I to testify in her defence,” he smiled. 

“I’m not sure that’s a wise decision,” Lois laughed, she had been privy to a previous ‘Why Lillian is the Worst Person and Mother on the Planet’ rant and they could be in no sense of term be called complementary or even fair (and we are talking about a homicidal, xenophobic maniac here).

“I contacted the prosecution. I’m testifying against her, we both are,” Lex smiled smugly, “I have been told I am not allowed to say the word ‘bitch’ at any point throughout the proceedings unless I am quoting her so I don’t know how well it will go,”. 

  
“I am allowed to put theta in an article,” Lois asked, grabbing her pen as she opened her notepad. 

“You can say she’s a bitch but that’s pretty common knowledge,” Lex laughed. 

“The testifying part. It might go a long way in salvaging your reputation,” Lois smiled. 

“Yes, you can announce those intentions,” Lex sighed, “What else do you need?”. 

“Just a few things,” Lois smiled, “I already know the angle I want to go for,”. She was about to write one of the most biased and complimentary articles of her whole career. 

The interview didn’t take long and it left Lex with an extra half an hour in his schedule which led to Kara and Lena exerting exactly zero effort in persuading Lois and Lex to take them to a park. Something Lois hadn’t done with Kara yet, a fact Len a had promptly declared illegal. 

Which was how Lois found herself on a park bench watching as Lena dragged Kara around the climbing frame, showing her the ropes (quite literally in some cases). 

“It doesn’t look safe,” Kara peered down the shiny slope, Lena had called a ‘slide’. 

“It’s totally safe and really fun,” Lena smiled, kneeling next to Kara. 

“But what if you fall off the end?” Kara peered down it again, they had nothing like this on Krypton. 

“Just trust me,” Lena practically begged and Kara found her head was nodding but she didn’t care as Lena’s face lit up in a huge smile. She was quite sure she was making what humans called a friend, they called it a /:bysh/ on Krypton. 

“You need to sit with your legs out in front of you,” Lena smiled, showing Kara the position quickly before stepping out of the way. Kara copied her but she didn’t move anywhere until she felt a hand on her back and then she was plummeting down the metal and that was definitely her own scream in her ears but then she stopped falling and opened her eyes and released it was actually quite fun. She looked back up at Lena and she could feel the smile stretching her cheeks. Lena was practically doubled over in laughter. 

“You need to move out of the way,” she yelled down through her laughs and Kara found herself pouting as she stepped off the slide, she didn’t scream that much. Lena sent herself down the slide with the skill and confidence of an experienced person, her laughter most subsided as she reached the bottom. 

“It couldn't have been that scary,” she teased, emphasising on the ‘that’. She had an accent that didn’t quite sound like anyone else in Metropolis. 

“It was my first time,” Kara pouted, even more, it always worked on her mom, and crossed her arms over her chest. 

“It was funny,” Lena laughed, let's do it again. Kara found her hand had been grabbed by the brunette and she was being pulled round to the weird green thing, Lena had called it a net, that they needed to climb up. They then had to crawl through a tunnel before climbing up a ladder. All of these were very new words, apart from tunnel, but this one definitely didn’t have a train in. 

It was easier the second time around and Kara managed to not scream but her eyes still stayed firmly shut as she hurtled down the shiny deathtrap. Lena followed her down and her eyes widened as she reached the bottom and noticed two things were now empty. She had called them swings earlier. 

“We need to get Lex and Lois to push us,” Lena smiled, running over to where her brother and Kara’s mum were sitting, talking about something. “Can you push us on the swings?” she was jumping up and down and asking as Kara ran up next to her. 

“Of course,” it was Lois that replied, grabbing her bag and nudging Lex who weirdly had his eyes shut. “They want us to push them,” she whispered. 

Lex nodded, sitting up and blinking his eyes open. “Were you asleep?” Lena asked him with an amused smirk. 

“No,” he laughed but Kara’s mom was nodding her head as she slipped her hand into Kara’s so they could walk over to the swings. 

“Say if you want me to go higher,” Lois lifted Kara onto the seat and she mimicked Lena’s position, gripping the metal chains. 

“Start slowly, please,” Kara asked as Lena warned her brother to push her ‘as high as physically possible’. 

“You got it,” Lois smiled and the swing started to move slowly up and down, it was quite relaxing if a little boring. 

“Not that slow,” Kara laughed and her mom laughed too before picking up the pace, the swing reaching a higher height before she fell back down. They should have had swings on Krypton, Kara decided as she asked her mom to send her even higher as high as Lena who was reaching really really high, so high Lex could barely reach the swing when she went back, but he was short, even by Earth standards. Her mom was shorter though but Kara definitely didn’t want to go as high as Lena.

Kara’s swing picked up more and more height and it felt like she was flying through the air. It was so cool. “Stick your legs out as you go up and tug them in as you go down,” her mom’s voice called and Kara tried to follow her instructions and found herself going even higher. They needed these things on Krypton. 

“I’m going to jump,” Lena yelled next to her, it was directed at her brother. Kara turned her head to the side to see Lena with a huge smile and her hair flowing behind her as she hurtled upwards. 

“No!” Lex shouted in response and Kara turned to see him white as a sheet. 

“You taught me how to do it,”. Kara turned to see Lena pouting. 

“When I was your irresponsible big brother. Now I am your responsible primary caregiver and I am telling you to slow down a bit before you do it at least,” he sighed and Lena’s face split into a smile, letting the swing slow a bit before she pumped her legs one last time and when it surged upwards, leapt from the swing and through the air, for what felt like a lifetime, before her feet connected with the ground and she fell to the side a little, trying to find her balance. 

“Don’t try that,” Lois warned from behind Kara. She wasn’t planning on, Lena made it look easy but she didn’t make it look any less scary when Kara looked down between her legs to see the floor so far away. She definitely wasn’t going to do that. 

“I won’t,” Kara called back as she stopped moving her legs and let Lois slow the swing so she could let herself slide off the swing, back onto solid ground. 

“You need to try the zipline too!” Lena took Kara’s hand and dragged Kara towards a raised metal platform, “Can you help us, please, Lex?” Lena called over to her brother as she helped Kara onto the platform. Lex smiled and jogged over to the hanging metal thing with a circle on the end and dragged it up so he was standing on the platform with the thing in hand. 

“What’s that?” Kara asked. 

“You sit on the circle,” Lena explained as Kara felt Lois wrap an arm around her waist and pull Kara closer to the edge of a platform and away from where Lex had walked up.

“I don’t want you to get hit,” Lois smiled. 

“Like this,” Lena went on as Lex lifted her on the circle and she gripped onto the metal pole. Lex reached just above her head and pulled back with one hand gripping the bottom of a seat. He let go and Lena went zooming off across the wire, spinning a little as she did until she reached the end and swung up really high before falling back down and moving back down the line. Lex ran down the ramp and caught hold of the thing Lena was sitting on and helping her off. Lena sprinted up to Kara. 

“You have to try it!” she yelled as she ran back toward Kara. Lex dragged the thing back with a smile and Lois left Kara’s side to take it from him, saying something Kara couldn’t hear as she focused on Lena telling her how to make sure you grip the thing properly so you don’t fall off. 

“Do you want to try, Kar?” Lois asked as she walked up the ramp with the thing that Kara really needed to learn the name for. Kara nodded as Lena took a step into the corner. Lois lifted her up and helped Kara sit on the thing. Kara gripped the pole tightly and crossed her legs over each other so she wouldn’t slip. 

“Hold on tight,” Lois smiled as she pulled back and then Kara found herself let go and she was speeding toward the end of the line faster and faster until she hit something and went swinging into the air. Now, this really felt like flying, Kara thought to herself as she involuntarily laughed, reaching the peak and falling back down as she slipped backwards. Now, this wasn’t quite as fun. She spun around to try and see where she was going and her mom was there catching her. 

“Was that fun?” she asked as she helped Kara off. 

“Yes,” Kara found herself smiling, “They should have had play parks on Krypton,” she laughed. She was promptly distracted by Lena promising to show her how to make it zig-zag; she didn’t notice how Lois smiled with a bit of relief and how she realised that maybe Kara might start to feel a little more at home on Earth and actually begin to cope with the loss of Krypton. She knew there would be good days and bad but she would let herself feel the relief in the good days because Kara’s happiness came first and on the good days she was happy. Kara also didn’t notice the small smile of support that Lex offered Lois before turning to Lena and Kara definitely noticed the next bit. 

“Just one more and then we have to get back to the office,” he warned her. Kara couldn’t help but feel disappointed, she really liked being around Lena. 

“Can you zig-zag it?” Lena asked, bouncing up and down on her toes. 

  
“You’re going want to move out of the way,” Lex warned Kara and she found Lois taking her hand and helping her off the back of the platform. Lex moved to one of the back corners and pulled it back really far before letting Lena go. She travelled, swinging side to side before reaching the end and going in a bigger circle and she swung upwards before falling back down and swinging side to side again as she moved back. Her laugh rang out across the playground the whole time. 

“You don’t have to do it if it looks too scary,” Lois whispered in Kara’s ear as she lifted her back onto the platform. 

“I want to try it,” Kara smiled, pushing down her little bit of uncertainty as Lena came sprinting towards her.

“It’s amazing!” Lena laughed as Lex brought it back. 

“You’re going to need to help me here, Lex, you’re the expert,” Lois smiled and it was Lex that helped Kara onto the thing and pulled back. 

“How high?” he asked. Kara made eye contact with Lena standing next to Lois. 

“As high as Lena,” Kara tried to keep the nervousness out of her voice as Lex pulled back a little bit further and let her go. Kara went speeding down, being pulled from side to side as she went. Each peak it felt like she was flying and each fall, she was falling. It was exhilarating and exciting and it made her stomach flutter and her body light up with thrill and then she reached the peak and she went round in a huge circle. Kara went so high and looked to see her feet level with the trees before she fell back down and began to swing to the side a little as she fell back toward the ramp. 

Lena definitely had to go as Lex got a call from his assistant but Lois let them walk back and Lena told Kara about music and this band called NSYNC which was on the rise. There were a lot of people outside of the building when they got back and they found themselves in an alleyway saying goodbye. Kara pulled Lena into a quick hug before they were made to go by Lex’s assistant waiting by the door, he said something about an emergency meeting.

Lois sighed as they started to walk back home from the office. She could see what was going to happen before it did. The red and blue streak flying in the sky up above Lois, she knew that he knew who they spent the day and that there was about to be a fight. She looked to the girl practically skipping as she walked along, telling Lois what they did for fun on Krypton. She waited for Kara to have a pause in her speech before speaking. 

“When we get home, how about I show you some of that music Lena mentioned?” Lois was pretty sure she had an old walkman or something somewhere; if Kara had headphones on, she might not be able to hear anything. 

-

“The Luthors!” Clark was standing in the open doorway when Lois and Kara got there. Lois gripped Kara’s hand tighter and took a deep breath

“Give me a minute,” Lois murmured to Clark, pushing past him as she walked in, bringing Kara with her. 

“This is urgent,” Clark insisted, slamming the front door shut so hard it made Kara jump. Lois instinctively hugged Kara to her side. 

“One minute,” she smiled falsely, leaning down and picking up Kara onto her hip and moving quickly toward Kara’s room, not without grabbing the walkman off the dresser where she had remembered leaving it god knows how many years, probably when she moved in. She also grabbed some of the tapes from next to the stereo. 

“Why’s Kal angry?” Kara asked as Lois put her down once they were in her room with Kara sitting on the edge of the bed. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Lois smiled, kneeling down next to her and setting up the walkman. Of course, the only tapes she had were a combination of Blondie and other 80s music. “Unfortunately I don’t have the music Lena mentioned, but these songs were my favourite and have been my favourite for a long time,” Lois smiled, she could hear Clark pacing behind the door and prayed Kara didn’t notice. 

“How does it work?” Kara asked curiously and Lois pulled the headphones on over her head, pressing a kiss to her nose as she did before she slipped the tape into the walkman. She moved one headphone to the side. 

“This one turns volume up and this one volume down. This one pauses the music playing, this one makes it play again and this one skips to the next song and this goes to the previous song so you can choose which ones you like,” Lois explained. 

Kara nodded and looked down and clicked play. Her face turned up in a smile as the music came in through her ears. “We had something like music on Krypton,” she whispered in awe, “I haven’t heard it since,” the sentence sounded so unfinished as it left the five-year-olds mouth and Lois drew her into a hug, pressing a kiss to her head. 

“You know what, when I’m finished talking to Kal we can go through different types of music and find out what you like best,” she smiled before moving the headphone back over Kara’s ear and giving her a thumbs up and a smile as she stood up. Kara smiled back and gave her a single thumbs up and reached over and grabbed the encyclopedia that she opened on the bed and then lay on her stomach to read it. 

Lois backed out of the room, pulling the door shut before turning to Kal. “Not here,” she warned, “Kara isn’t going to be subjected to your complete insanity and blind accusations,” Lois warned, moving through to the back of the apartment, away from Kara’s bedroom.

“I don’t know why you are acting like you are serving her best interests. You are literally having her become friends with the devil,” his voice was close to a shout as he almost outright refused to follow Lois through the apartment, staying put near Kara’s door. 

“Clark, I swear to God,” Lois hissed significantly quieter than her husband as she beckoned him through, “If you had any idea of her best interests you would get away from that door and over here, now,”. 

Clark sighed obviously considering his options, looking between Lois and the door and sighing again and marching over to Lois. Lois reached behind her and found the door handle, opened it and stepped aside to let Clark walk in before she shut the door. Clark stopped and looked around for a second, by Lois’ best guess he hadn’t been in there for over a month and a half with his insistence on spending time away. Some things had changed. He focused on where his side of the bed was and his bedside table. His usual things had been replaced with a spare notepad and pen of Lois’ and his alarm clock and spare glasses had gone. 

He turned around and looked back at Lois standing by the door, an odd heavy silence had befallen them. Each of them waiting for the other to say the first word. 

“A Luthor,” Clark breathed, “A fucking Luthor,”. 

“A human being trying his best to get away from a name he had no choice over,” Lois corrected, taking a seat in the armchair opposite her bed. 

“A Luthor,” he insisted, taking a slow deep breath. “You let a Super hang around with a Luthor, go to the park with a Luthor, go to the office of a Luthor,”. 

“No,” Lois interrupted him, her voice being the one to rise above the normal level they had been working at, “I let Kara Zor-El hang out with the first person her age on this planet that she has had any kind of connection with and today,” Lois took a deep breath, her voice slipping back down to a normal volume, “Today, she told me that there should have been playparks on Krypton. I don’t care what you have to say about Lena or Lex or Lillian, who Kara only knows as Lena’s stepmother by the way. You haven’t been there for any of it. The nights of tears, of nightmares, of panic attacks and complete upset and depression over the fact that at five-years-old she lost,” Lois’ voice cracked a little as she spoke more and more, she had stood up and was standing closer to Clark. 

“She lost everything and everyone. An entire planet of everything she knew all gone in a heartbeat. Her mother, her father, her aunts and uncles, her best friends, her life, her language and her culture all disappeared in the blink of an eye and the one thing,” Lois took a deep breath and finally made real eye contact with her husband.

“The one thing she was sure of was the fact she was following a baby and she gets to a new planet where not even the colour of the sun is the same and she finds a twenty-six year old man who doesn’t even want to know her or be near her because of his blind jealousy of the fact she got to know everything you didn’t and she is a Kryptonian in every way you aren’t and you can’t bear to face that fact so instead you run away from everyone in the family on a mission to wallow in your own self-pity,” Lois practically spat out the last part and Clark swallowed looking up at her before standing up and looking down at Lois.

“I don’t know what has disillusioned you into thinking you know me but we have barely spoken in the past three months because of her,” he spat out the final word right into her face. 

“I would really start to rethink what had really caused us not to speak,” Lois glared up at him but he was intimidating and hse had to fight the urge to step away. It felt like she was talking to Superman as his greatest enemy instead of her shy dork of a husband. 

“We should have sent her away,” he practically yelled, “She changed you. She destroyed everything,”. 

“That was you,” Lois spun around and opened the door to send him out and saw Kara standing halfway to the kitchen, headphones off, in complete shock. Lois looked back at Clark, he didn’t even have the decency to look slightly remorseful. 

“Sorry,” he whispered. 

“Sorry you said it or sorry she heard it,” Lois quipped back as she went over to Kara and pulled her into a hug, holding her close. 

“Lois,” Clark tried. 

“Just get out,” she sighed, before turning to Kara, the only way she knew he had left was the blast of air that confronted both of them as he flew out of the balcony. 

“Did I destroy everything?” Kara asked in a small voice. 

“No,” Lois whispered, pulling her into a hug and pressing a kiss to her forehead, “No. You just happened to come at a time when I was starting to see what was already broken,” Lois moved so she looked Kara in the eyes, “You haven’t done anything but make my life better,” she pulled her back into a tight hug. 

“There was a reason I left my room,” Kara whispered into Lois’ ear. 

“What was it, sweetheart?” Lois stroked her back as she held her close, even if it took everything she was going to protect this child from the world. 

“I was going to ask you about starting school here,”. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i finished this while i watched the Crown. i binged it all today even though i promised my mum i'd watch it with her however she averages one episode a week i don't stan that so i watched so fast in a desperate attempt to finish before i'm a celeb which is on later tonight which is so aggressively British. also somehow not even gillian anderson could make me like thatcher and she deserves an Emmy for that. 
> 
> anygays, i should update soon i'm getting more into the flow of school. 
> 
> avery :)


	5. The Art of Scraping Through

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Kara starts at school, everything comes to a head, pressure building until it would explode.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: rating change cs i realised how much i use swear words
> 
> this is set in like a year hybrid between now and 1990... i never decided so you make up your mind... please ignore technology inconsistencies (i am a 2000s baby so i don't know a time pre-google really so my mind can't comprehend tech in the 90s (i barely remember a time pre-spotify etc.)
> 
> also i know i'm adding more chapters, without realising i split one chapter in my plan in half and now we have more... this will probably keeping happening. 
> 
> i would also like to apologise for how long this took... school's a bitch

There's an art to life's distractions

To somehow escape the burning weight

The art of scraping through

Some like to imagine

The dark caress of someone else I guess any thrill will do

_ Someone New, Hozier _

* * *

“He said what?” Lucy asked on the other end of the phone. Kara had fallen asleep a little while ago after they’d chatted about the school thing a little more and eaten some food and Lois had done her best to distract Kara. It all ended in an early bedtime for Kara and Lois opening Clark’s favourite wine solely to piss him off if he ever came back. She’d gone to call Cat first but it went straight to voicemail so she left a message saying to call her back. 

“Not to act like I was serving her best interests,” Lois sighed. 

“That’s it,”. Lois heard some shuffling in the background of the call, “I’m going to find that little piece of shit and murder hi-”. 

“Lucy,” Lois warned, raising her voice a little before sighing, “I’m just getting started so save the murder till the end,”. 

“It gets worse doesn’t it. I swear if Kara heard any of his bullshit I am arresting him. He’s a vigilante, it’s technically illegal,”. Lois could hear her sister sitting back down and maybe also the sound of a safety being put back on a gun. She decided to ignore that part and instead pressed her lips together. 

“I’m getting a warrant in the morning,” Lucy sighed, reading Lois like an open book, “Finish the story,”. 

“Well I got him into the bedroom away from Kara and,” Lois launched into the story with a sigh. Clark in prison didn’t sound like such a bad idea. 

* * *

“I need your lawyer expertise anyway. Is there any way I can win custody of Kara at this point?” Lois asked after Lucy’s yelling over the situation had finished. 

“Honestly,” Lucy took a deep breath, “Because you haven’t legally adopted her and she was put in Clark Kent’s custody on the papers. Sorry but no,”. Lois took a long drink of wine and let her head fall back against the couch. 

“Do you want me to come over?” Lucy asked. 

“I’m good,” Lois sighed, “I’m good,” she had no idea who she was trying to convince, “I can ju-”. 

“Why the hell did I just get an email telling Clark Kent has quit his job?” a familiar voice burst into the room. Lois looked around and smiled properly for the first time in a while. 

“I guess your girlfriend can handle it,” Lucy’s teasing voice came through the phone before the line went dead. 

“He did what?” Lois dropped the phone and turned around on the couch to look at the woman standing in the door. 

“According to Perry, he quit effective immediately,” Cat looked around as she walked in, dropping her bag down and going over to the couch and Lois, “What happened?” she asked as she studied Lois’ face. Lois would have savoured the moment where he wasn't working at the Daily Planet for a lot longer if she knew it wasn't going to stick. 

“Fight,” Lois sighed as Cat grabbed another wine glass from the kitchen. 

“I’m going to need more than that,” she laughed, “Carter’s at his dad’s so I have all night,” she shrugged, pouring herself a glass from the bottle and taking a seat next to Lois. 

“Well, today Kara and I went to the park with Lena and Lex and it was amazing,” Lois launched into a longer story of the day than she recounted to Lucy. Cat just listening the whole time. 

* * *

“That’s a lot,” Cat smiled as Lois finished, she hadn’t said a single thing out loud since Lois had started speaking. She went through everything from the park to the fight to the school bombshell to her conversation with Lucy. The whole time Cat grip on the cushion she was holding and the amount of wine she consumed said a lot about how she was feeling about it. 

“Yeah,”. 

“Do you want me to ask about how you are feeling or do you want to not talk about that feelings shit?” Cat asked, it was a callback to when they first started dating and Lois had a series of five days when Cat asked if she was okay and she had responded with a yelled “obviously not”. It had all resulted in the question Cat repeated now. The question also often led to Cat’s idea of a distraction if Lois chose the latter option, she had a feeling that wasn’t on the table right now considering the sleeping child who had a tendency of waking up at random times passed out next door. 

“I want a divorce but Kara comes first,” Lois took a deep breath considering her next words. She didn’t want to yell (she really wanted to scream but that wasn’t possible), she needed to stay calm. “I want,” she took another deep breath and looked Cat in the eye, “I want to get out of this fucking apartment and away from him and make sure Kara never has to so much as see his selfish ass again and I want to make sure she is never hurt again and I want,” she looked at Cat and just shrugged, she couldn't say what else she wanted, which apartment she wanted to live in, who she wanted to be with, it was unfair. They both knew it, saying made it harder. Saying it made it real. 

“I want happiness,” she decided on and Cat just nodded in acknowledgement. 

“Me too,” she whispered, her eyes darting down to Lois’ lips for just a second. Lois deposited the wine glass on the coffee table and reached forward and took Cat’s from her hand too and put on the coffee table next to hers. 

“I missed you this week,” she whispered into the heavy silence between them. 

“Me too,” Cat whispered, her hand moving the cushion she had over her legs so it was behind her before that same hand darted to Lois’ waist and the other to wrap around the back of her neck to pull their lips together until they met in a kiss. Lois’ hand went up to cradle Cat’s cheek and other to her hip to pull her in.

The kiss was relief, finally allowing herself to feel what she needed to feel as she lost herself in the familiarity. Then there was something not so familiar. The taste of salt reached her mouth and Cat’s lips were leaving hers. Lois opened her eyes, Cat’s hands now holding her face close and wiping some fallen tears away. 

“Cat,” Lois whispered, an almost silent plea to have her not talk about it. Cat nodded and just pulled her close and into a hug.

* * *

Cat looked over at the couch where Lois had passed out as she made a headstart on breakfast, waffles (aka Lois’ top-secret comfort food). It took a while to find the waffle iron but she knew it would be somewhere. Lois was still asleep and she assumed Kara too, judging by the silence from her room. It felt oddly domestic, like when they were first dating and managed to spend the odd weekend together. She’d even robbed Lois of a sweatshirt and sweatpants to change into. A fashion faux-pas but a necessary one, she didn’t think she had dressed down this much since around Carter’s birth. There was a small noise behind her and Cat spun around. 

Kara was standing in the door to her bedroom having just opened the door. She had the infamous red blanket in hand and was dressed in just a simple set of polka dot pyjamas. Confusion coloured her face as she spotted Cat. Cat just put a finger to her lips and she crossed the room to Kara. 

“Your mom’s still asleep,” she whispered, crouching down in front of Kara. 

“She normally is when I wake up,” Kara smiled, “Where have you been since the…?” Kara trailed off but Cat knew what she meant. 

“Chasing stor-” Cat faltered over her words as she found Kara to be hugging her, Cat’s arms instinctively curled around the little girl, “Chasing stories like your mom,” she finished, placing a kiss to Kara’s temple-like she would so often do with Carter. There was a loud stomach grumble from Kara’s direction as she did and she pulled back to look at Kara with a small laugh. 

“Have you ever had waffles?” she asked. Kara shook her head, her lips mouthing the new word. 

“You’ve been missing out,” Cat smiled, it was instinct to pick Kara up on her hip and deposit her on the kitchen counter as she turned back to where there was a cooked waffle waiting in the iron. 

She didn’t notice Lois wake up and sit up on the couch to watch her with a soft smile until she turned back around with the waffle on a plate. Lois caught her eye and shook her head. “Don’t let Cat make it for you,” she laughed and Kara spun to face her as well, “She puts barely any sugar and chocolate on it,” Lois smiled as she made her way over to the kitchen, leaning over to whisper in Kara’s ear, loud enough Cat could easily hear, “She makes them healthy,”. 

“Isn't healthy good?” Kara questioned, turning to face her mom with confusion. 

“Not with waffles,” Lois smiled far too mischievously for the next thing to be any good and Cat watched as she pulled out the spray can of cream from the fridge. 

“I’ve never had that,” Kara looked at it curiously. 

“You can try it,” Lois smiled, shaking the can and taking the lid off, “Like this,” she smiled before tipping her head back and spraying some into her mouth. Cat watched Kara’s eyes light up as she placed the waffle on the counter. “Right?” she turned to Cat with a mischievous glint in her eye. Cat just shook her head. 

“Can I try?” Kara almost fell off the counter in her excitement as Lois passed her the cream. 

“Shake it first then push down on the raised bit,” Lois instructed as Kara focused hard as she shook the can. 

“This isn’t going to go well,” Cat whispered to Lois, leaning close to her so she could whisper in her ear. 

“Don’t be such a downer, Catherine,” Lois teased quietly, snaking a hand around Cat’s waist and holding her close in an intimate fashion that Cat wasn’t used to when they were around anyone. Her instinct to pull away was stilled as Lois’ thumb started to rub a slow circle on her hip. Cat focused her attention back on Kara who was studying the can carefully, her thumb cautiously being placed over the raised part. Her head tipped back as she mimicked Lois earlier and the can lifted above her head. 

“It’s going to go so wrong,” she whispered as Kara tried to press down on the raised part a couple of times before the final time and it all began to move in slow motion as the cream fell out of the can and down, down, down… all over Kara’s face. 

It didn’t stop falling as Cat felt Lois dissolve into laughter next to her and then she found herself falling into giggles as well as Lois left her side to reach for something. A camera Cat noticed as she refocused on Kara. The cream had stopped falling and Kara was turning her head forward. 

Her tongue darted out and licked the area around her lips, catching some of the cream which covered her whole face. She seemed to think for a minute as she tasted it before her lips curled up in a proud smile. “Smile!” Lois spoke next to Cat and Kara gave the camera a goofy grin. There was cream all over her, in her hair and all over her face but she didn’t seem to care and she brought a finger to her cheek and ate some more. 

Cat grabbed the kitchen tea towel behind her out of instinct and walked up to Kara. “Come here,” she smiled, wiping some of the cream off her face, focusing on the bit that looked like it might fall into her eyes. She didn’t notice Lois watching her with an indistinguishable look as she wiped the cream off Kara’s beaming face. It just felt natural. Looking back she may have noticed a shift but as she wiped the cream off Kara’s face it just felt normal. 

Cat ended up spending the whole day with Kara and Lois. They went to pick up Carter after he had a tantrum and his dad insisted he was too much to handle, and then there was the trip to the park and then lunch and then, because it was practically illegal Kara hadn’t been yet, a trip to the cinema to see The Incredibles followed by pizza from one of the greatest pop-up vans in Metropolis. The day started the cinema routine each Saturday. It was perfect. They could sit next to each other and hold hands and have no one notice. It became like a secret date as their whole relationship became more reliant on a stolen kiss in the office when no one was looking and the grazing of their fingers as they passed by each other in the hallway and all-day texts and midnight calls. They could never really be alone. 

But as their relationship became so much more hidden as Lois started to build her divorce case. The one thing that no one could ever know was that she and Cat were in a relationship. Lois started by getting Kara into a school, largely at the girl’s insistence, and she ended up at Lena’s school, largely at Lex’s insistence with him arguing it would be easier if Kara at least knew one person she was going to go to school with. 

Kara fell in love with school instantly. Lois could barely get her to sleep the night before her first day but when she did Kara didn’t wake up again and for the first night since she came to Earth Lois didn’t stay in her room and Kara didn’t have a single nightmare. Lois almost cried out of happiness when Kara came bounding into her room with a beaming smile and leapt onto the bed. It might have also been the fact it was so close to the five in the morning. She instead pulled Kara into her hug and showered her face with kisses before she sent her running to change into some clothing appropriate for school.

Lois had two cups of coffee that morning while Kara ran in and out of the kitchen trying on outfit after outfit to see which is best. All of them were perfect but Kara was looking for ‘the one’ in her own words. She eventually decided on a basic grey graphic t-shirt with the solar system on and an unbuttoned flannel shirt with the sleeves-rolled-up over-the-top all partnered with cuffed jeans and a pair of converse-style shoes. 

Kara could barely sit down for five minutes to eat her breakfast while Lois started to pack Kara’s lunch away. By the time Lois had finished getting everything ready for Kara’s first day, they were thirty minutes early. That didn’t stop Kara from sitting in front of the front door with her bag on her back and her lunch in her hand while she asked Lois when they were leaving every thirty seconds. Lois let her as she got ready for the day, Kara getting more and more exasperated and bored as the time went on. 

Lois walked into the hallway to see Kara slumped against the wall in complete boredom, “Do you have everything?” she asked. 

“Yeah,” Kara sighed. 

“Good,” Lois smiled, putting her coat on and pulling her handbag onto her shoulder, “Let’s go then,” she smiled, slipping her feet into her heeled boots before she bent over and did up the zip, turning her head to watch the way Kara’s eyes lit up as she jumped off the floor. 

“Finally,” she smiled, standing on her tiptoes to reach up and unlock the door. Lois stood back up with a smile and pressed a kiss to the side of Kara’s temple before she took her hand and pulled the door open. The journey to school wasn’t long or far, a quick trip on the subway followed by a short walk to the school. It wasn’t far from the Daily Planet offices. Kara chatted excitedly the whole way about everything the school day ahead may hold. 

Lois stopped Kara just inside the school gates before they walked into the building. “Do you remember what we talked about?” she asked, crouching down in front of Kara and making sure her clothing looked neat. Probably fussing unnecessarily but she was more anxious than Kara. 

“Does it have to be Kara Kent?” Kara mumbled. 

“Yeah,” Lois smiled softly. 

“Can’t it be Lane,” she pouted. 

“Maybe in a few years,” Lois found herself saying. They’d had this conversation a few times before but the sentiment of it all never failed to strike Kara through the heart. She pulled Kara into a hug and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Khap ukiem rraop  _ (I love you) _ ,” she whispered into her ear. 

“I love you too, Mommy,” Kara whispered back.

Lois pulled away from the hug to look Kara in the eye properly, “Remember, sweetheart, if it ever gets too much tell your teacher to call me and I can come to get you right away,”. 

“Kara!” the familiar shout came from near the gates and Kara ran out of Lois’ arms to go see her best friend and Lois stood back up, picking up the lunch that Kara had dropped. 

“Lane,” Lex smiled. 

“Luthor,” Lois smiled back, heading over toward him and where Lena and Kara now were.

“How are you coping?” Lex asked. 

“Perfectly fine,” Lois blatantly lied. She was an anxious mess and Lex knew it. 

“Sure,” Lex laughed. 

“Let’s go in, girls,” Lois turned to Kara and Lena ignoring Lex. 

“I’ll show you our classroom,” Lena smiled, taking Kara’s hand and leading her inside. Lois and Lex followed. 

Lois watched as Kara instantly integrated into the classroom, taking her lunch off Lois and easily introducing herself to her teacher with Lena by her side. 

“Lois Lane?” the teacher came over to her as Kara had finished talking to her. Lena had already waved Lex off and he left with a quick goodbye. 

“Hi,” Lois smiled at the woman, she looked like your stereotypical Kindergarten teacher.

“Now, I just need to check it will either be you or your husband, Clark, picking Kara up,” she asked. 

“No,” Lois rushed to correct her, “Just me, Clark won’t be picking Kara up. If I can’t pick her up Lex Luthor will,”. 

“Okay,” she made a note, “Lex also put you on Lena’s list. The girls seem like good friends,”. 

“They are,” Lois smiled, looking over at Kara. Kara looked up and caught Lois’ eye. She whispered something to Lena before running over to Lois and Kara almost knocked her off her feet as she wrapped her arms around Lois' legs in a hug. Lois leant down and picked her up in a hug. 

“Bye, Mommy,” Kara whispered into her ear, wrapping her arms around Lois’ neck. Lois felt tears prick at the back of her eyes but blinked it back and pressed a kiss to Kara’s temple. 

“Bye, sweetie,” she smiled, “Have a fun day,” lifted her onto the floor, placing another kiss to the top of her head. 

“I love you,” Kara whispered. 

“I love you too,” Lois whispered back, rubbing a hand gently across her arm. Kara turned back to run back to Lena. Lois watched her, a huge smile plastered across Kara’s face and Lois couldn’t help but mirror it. 

She turned to the teacher, “She’s struggled quite a bit, if she needs me please call me,” Lois asked, more firmly than she meant to. 

“Of course,” the teacher smiled and Lois very reluctantly left the classroom with one final wave to Kara. 

Lois walked onto the floor and looked over to the office she shared with Cat. The curtains were drawn so no one could look in on the glass. Lois just grabbed her briefings from Perry without a word before heading into her office and pulling the door shut behind her to see Cat pacing the length of one side of the small office. She didn’t notice Lois at first as Lois put her briefing and bag down and shrugged her coat off. 

“Hi,” she ended up saying to cut off Cat’s pacing and make the woman spin around to face her. 

“How was she?” Cat asked before anything else. 

“Very excited. We couldn’t get there quick enough,” Lois smiled, reaching forward and grabbing Cat’s hand and pulling her closer.

“And you?” Cat smiled softly, “How are you?”. 

“Convinced that somehow I’m fucking it all up,” Lois found herself admitting everything easily when Cat was near. 

Cat just offered her a small smile, “Welcome to parenthood,”. 

“She asked to have the name Kara Lane again,” Lois looked Cat in the eye to see her looking expectantly, just waiting to hear what Lois had to say, “She seemed so excited to be there. I just don’t want it to go wrong. It’s our first trial of human life and I hate that I have to tell her to be someone she’s not,”. 

“She’s a strong kid. She won’t lose herself. You won’t let her,” Cat smiled, a hand running comfortably up and down Lois’ arm. Lois moved her hand to Cat’s waist and pulled her closer against her body, the comforting warmth. Cat moved and pulled Lois into a hug, Lois instantly felt herself relax, her whole body filling with relief in the familiarity. Her eyes slipped shut into the hug as kisses were pressed to her cheek and her jaw and her neck. 

There was a knock at the door and they leapt apart. Lois falling into her chair and Cat into hers. “Come in,” Cat called, her voice slightly shaky as Lois threw her bag to the ground to make it look like she hadn’t just shown up. 

The door pushed open and James walked in, completely ignoring Lois. To say he was mad Lucy was dating his sister would be an understatement. For some reason, he blamed Lois. It wasn’t her fault her sister had taste. 

“You can’t publish your latest article,” he demanded of Cat. Cat took a deep breath. Lois knew he was about to be destroyed. 

Cat ended up joining Lois at pick-up. Carter was picked up by both of them before they went to Kara’s school. They went around to the designated pick-up area and five minutes later Kara and Lena’s class came out and Kara was sprinting toward Lois. Lois bent down and picked her up in a hug and held her close. 

“Hi Mommy,” Kara smiled. 

“Hi kir chahv _ (little one) _ ,” Lois whispered back. 

“Hi, Cat. Hi Carter,” Kara turned in Lois’ arms to face Cat who had Carter in her arms. 

“Hi Kara,” Cat smiled, “How was your first day at school?”. 

“Amazing,” Kara beamed, slipping out of Lois’ arms to place her feet on the ground and slip her hand into Lois’. 

“Grant. Lane,” Lex’s normal greeting came a little out of breath as he ran past them, waving toward Lena who left the teacher’s side to go to her brother. Lex and Lena came walking over. 

“Luthor,” Cat smiled.

For the next week, it became a routine. Together, Cat and Lois would pick up Cat and Carter say a quick hello to Lex and Lena and then they would go back to Cat’s and most of the time Cat and Lois would work there while Carter and Kara hung out and for that week they would all eat dinner together too. If Lois knew that that dinner on that Monday after Kara had had her first day of school would become one of the most familiar parts of her life for so long she probably would have savoured it more than she did and let herself get lost in the sound of Kara’s and Carter’s laughter even more and in Cat’s smile as she watched them. Instead, she treated it as something normal and something that just happened, not the beginning of the rest of her life. They had the same dinner for the rest of the week. It just happened really. 

The next week their routine changed as workloads got heavier. It became that Cat would do pick up on Mondays and Thursdays, Lex would do pick up on Wednesdays and Lois took Tuesdays and Fridays. It ran like a smooth machine for about three weeks. In the same time, Cat won custody of Carter in the quickest trial in existence. After Carter’s tantrum upon seeing his father and very clear fear and hatred of the man, the judge awarded Cat full custody and Carter’s father no visitation. Lois hadn’t seen Cat so happy in so long, nothing could wipe the smile off her face. Not even an impossible assignment from Perry. 

But the happiness and the ease and the simpleness of it all only lasted a month because of course it only lasted a month. Wednesday. Lois really fucking hated that Wednesday. The only difference from every other Wednesday was that Clark was in the office when Lex dropped Carter and Kara off. He watched Lex drop Carter and Kara off and watched Kara give Lex a hug and then Lena a bigger one before running over to Lois. And he saw the familiarity of it all. Carter’s ease with it. Lena knowing the way around the office and Lex knowing his way around too. Lois didn’t notice until Kara was in her arms telling her about her day and she looked around for Perry to collect her edits from and she saw him staring them down. His eyes almost glowing with rage. She wanted to run.

“That sounds amazing, sweetie,” Lois said instead to Kara, “Do you have any homework?”. 

“I’ll do it now!” Kara smiled, sliding out of her arms and running into Cat and Lois’ office where she had a tiny desk. Lois looked over at Cat who had clearly noticed the same thing as she had. They both followed Kara into the office. Carter going to sit in his beanbag in the corner. Lois and Cat both just sat at their computers. They couldn’t exactly talk about this out loud. Cat started typing and Lois really didn’t know what to do entirely. She just let her head fall into her hands as she thought it all through. 

There was a heel dragged up her leg out of nowhere and Lois jerked her head up to a notification on her computer. An email from one cat_grant71164@hotmail.com, Cat’s personal email address. She looked up at Cat over her computer and the woman just offered her a small smile. Lois clicked open the email. 

* * *

**To: Lois Lane <llane81756@hotmail.com> **

**From: Cat Grant <cat_grant71164@hotmail.com>**

**Subject: :)**

Do you want to stay at mine tonight?

* * *

That was the first Lois had ever seen Cat use any text symbol as she did just there. Catherine Jane Grant had previously been quoted text-speech was a load of rubbish only used by the least educated in our dump truck of a society. Lois had to bite back a smile as she read it, her bottom lip slipping between her teeth unintentionally. She typed back a quick reply. 

* * *

**To: Cat Grant <cat_grant71164@hotmail.com>**

**From: Lois Lane <llane81756@hotmail.com>**

**Subject: :)**

I probably shouldn’t, he could come to yours. I can handle him. It’s just Kara. 

* * *

Cat looked up and offered Lois a quick sympathetic smile as she sent off her reply, her heels had been kicked off and her foot rubbed a grounding and comforting circle on her shin. 

* * *

**To: Lois Lane <llane81756@hotmail.com> **

**From: Cat Grant <cat_grant71164@hotmail.com>**

**Subject: :)**

Sleepover and movie night for Kara?

* * *

**To: Cat Grant <cat_grant71164@hotmail.com>**

**From: Lois Lane <llane81756@hotmail.com>**

**Subject: :)**

I can’t put that on you. 

* * *

**To: Lois Lane <llane81756@hotmail.com> **

**From: Cat Grant <cat_grant71164@hotmail.com>**

**Subject: :)**

You’re not putting it on me, I’m offering. She’s an awesome kid and I would enjoy myself. Just think about it, please. 

* * *

Lois sighed and looked over at her daughter focusing so carefully tracing the letters on her homework sheet. Everything in her was conflicted. She couldn't spend a night away from her. This wasn’t the right time to try that. That was for a day with more strength. Kara’s nightmares hadn’t entirely stopped. It was Kryptonian words that calmed her down. But Clark wouldn't make it easier. She couldn’t have Kara hear one of those fights again. She could just have the argument then leave. Maybe, she had half a plan. 

* * *

**To: Cat Grant <cat_grant71164@hotmail.com>**

**From: Lois Lane <llane81756@hotmail.com>**

**Subject: :)**

Clark has to finish that article on the latest Superman venture before he leaves. Make sure he takes a while to get out. I’m going to go home now with Kara and call my lawyer/sister, tell him to file for divorce in the morning. I’ll finish any work there. Get Kara listening to music or something and then tell him we’re getting a divorce. After I don’t know. 

* * *

**To: Lois Lane <llane81756@hotmail.com> **

**From: Cat Grant <cat_grant71164@hotmail.com>**

**Subject: :)**

Pack some bags. You’re coming to stay at mine. Don’t bother objecting or fighting against like I know you will. You and I both know it’s a good idea. 

* * *

Lois sighed as her original reply was squashed, she shot Cat a look to tell her exactly back but just got a shrug and a smug smile in return. 

* * *

**To: Cat Grant <cat_grant71164@hotmail.com>**

**From: Lois Lane <llane81756@hotmail.com>**

**Subject: :)**

Fine. 

* * *

Cat smiled triumphantly as she read Lois’ one-word reply. Lois didn’t expect to see Cat typing a response though. She was jolted from looking over at Kara by the notification. 

* * *

**To: Lois Lane <llane81756@hotmail.com> **

**From: Cat Grant <cat_grant71164@hotmail.com>**

**Subject: :)**

I will always be there whenever you need me. 

* * *

Lois looked up and took a deep breath, her whole body relaxing. She could hear Cat saying those words. She’d heard them before. They’d never not reigned true. Lois smiled at Cat who just gave one as a response. All Lois wanted to do was screw the glass windows and round the desk and pull Cat into a kiss. But she couldn’t so instead before she did, she turned to watch Kara as she pushed her glasses up her nose. She was already on ‘y’. Lois’ heart surged with pride. Learning a new language wasn’t easy, learning a new alphabet was even harder. 

“I’m done,” Kara announced just a few seconds later with a toothy grin. Would Kara ever lose a tooth? That was a question for another day, Lois shoved it aside. 

“I’m so proud of you,” she smiled as she stood up and went over to her daughter, crouching down and looking over her shoulder at the work. The letters had been traced and copied almost perfectly. “You’re so awesome,” she added as she looked at the work, “Do you want to teach me some of the Kryptonian alphabet when we get home?” she found herself asking, realising she could listen and speak the language but not read and write to any degree. She may need to get Kal-Ex’s help again. Thank Rao he had left a help portal with Lois. 

“Yes,” Kara’s eyes lit up. 

“Perfect,” Lois pressed a kiss to Kara’s temple and pointed to the top of the sheet, “Name,” she reminded her daughter, standing up a little. “How about we head home now?”. 

Kara just nodded as she focused on writing her name in neat letters while Lois went to pack up. Standing in a weird place as she did so she could be close enough to Cat for a whispered conversation. Cat’s hand falling to rest discreetly above Lois’ as she entwined their fingers. 

“I’ll call at nine if you don’t end up coming over,” Cat whispered. Lois just nodded, there was no point fighting Cat. “And page me when you’re leaving. I’ll have a car meet you on the corner next to the bodega,”. 

“I don’t need that,” Lois shook her head. 

“Lois,” Cat started in that soft tone. 

“Cat,” Lois replied, “Just not that, okay?”. 

“Just stay safe, please,” Cat almost pleaded, her sentence hung a little as though she was going to say something but she decided against it. 

“Always,” Lois whispered back as she slipped her final notepad into her bag and had to slip her hand away from Cat’s to help Kara get her bag on her back. 

“See you tomorrow,” Kara smiled widely to Cat as Lois tied Kara’s hair up, half the hair having fallen out of the ponytail throughout the day. 

“See you tomorrow, Kara,” Cat smiled, standing up and crouching down to pull Kara into a hug, Kara easily wrapped her arms around the woman. 

“See you tomorrow, Carter,” Lois signed to Carter in the corner. He smiled and waved back.

“Bye, Carter,” Kara waved as Cat stood up from the hug. Lois stepped around Kara to pull Cat into her own hug. Hugging was a friendship thing after all, as long as it didn’t last too long. Lois let her eyes slip shut into the hug, her whole body relaxing in Cat’s arms. She could spend forever in Cat’s arms. But that would be too long to be platonic. Too long. Lois almost jumped out of the hug and did her best to ignore Cat’s smile and shaking head. 

“Come on, Kara,” Lois smiled, taking her daughter's hand. 

“See you later,” Cat mouthed as Lois glanced over her shoulder as she pushed out of the office. 

* * *

Lois paced up and down the room. Kara had decided to start writing a diary in both Kryptonian and English so Lois let her start on that while she waited for Lucy to pick up the phone. It wasn’t that hard. 

“I’m meant to be in a meeting with dad, this better be good,” came the sigh as her sister’s familiar voice came through the phone, replacing the ringing tone Lois had been listening to for the last five minutes. 

“I want to file for divorce in the morning. I have plenty of evidence Clark hasn’t spent a single second near Kara since we adopted her,” the words fell out of Lois’ mouth so fast they jumbled together. 

“Holy shit,” Lucy whispered, there was some shuffling and the sound of Lucy covering the microphone, “Witness for a case is freaking out,” Lois heard the muffled explanation. “One sec, I just need to get somewhere quieter,” Lucy was back and then there was some muffled yelling and the sound of a door slamming. 

“What brought this on?” Lucy asked as the background noise came to complete silence. 

“Clark just saw Lex drop Kara off at the office after school and I am one hundred per cent sure he’s going to flip his shit later and it’s going to be the last time,” Lois sighed, “Kara can’t hear it again,”. 

“Got it. I have had the divorce papers filled out for so long now,” Lois could hear her sister’s victorious smile, “I’m proud of you for doing this, sis,”. 

“I’m the big sister. I’m the one who says stuff like that,” Lois smiled back, dodging the compliment. 

“Two years means nothing,” Lucy laughed.

“How’s ex-boyfriend’s sister who you’re now dating?” Lois fired back. 

“She is everything good about James,” Lucy smiled. 

“There were good things about James?”. 

“Yeah,” Lucy smiled, “His sister but that’s not relevant right now. What’s your plan?”. 

“I’m going to stay at Cat’s,”. 

“That would be a great plan if you two weren’t dating,” Lucy sighed, “You can’t be cheating during divorce proceedings. It will skew the judge in his favour,”. 

“Fine. I’m going to stay with my close friend who I not only work with but also share an office with as well as a school pick-up rota because our kids are of similar ages. She also happens to have a large apartment with two spare bedrooms and be straight to public knowledge,” Lois smiled. 

“You are such a journalist,” Lucy muttered, thinking over Lois’ words. “Fine,” she sighed, “Clark won’t suspect you of being with Cat anyway so I can’t imagine it would realistically come up but if it does you need to become a very good liar and I know nothing because my sister, unfortunately, suffers from heterosexuality. See the living embodiment of a dick she chose to marry for evidence,” Lucy laughed lightly at her own words while Lois just shook her head. 

“Is this how you talk about the divorce proceedings of all your clients?” Lois sighed. 

“I don’t normally do divorce,” Lucy laughed, “Dad would disown me for supporting such an ugly practice,” her confidence and laughter wavering as she spoke. “Fuck,” she whispered as Lois came to the same realisation. 

“Dad,” Lois whispered. Maybe the shock of a bisexual daughter in a lesbian relationship getting a divorce from her husband and definitely having pre-marital sex (with gay marriage not being a thing) would give him a big enough heart attack. Maybe Lucy could tell him who she was dating at the same time. 

“Speak of the devil,” Lucy laughed as the phone very clearly went on speaker. 

“You don’t have any witnesses at the minute,” the voice was very clearly their father’s. 

“It’s actually a client for another thing,” Lucy’s whole voice shifted as she spoke to their dad. 

“What client for what thing?”. 

“Hi Dad,” Lois called out, saving her sister. 

“Lois Joanne Lane. Why the hell do you need a lawyer?” his voice boomed through the phone and Lois had to hold it away from her ear. 

“I’mgettingadivorce,” she mumbled, hoping maybe she could feign some bad connection when he couldn’t hear her. 

“A divorce!” the yell was returned. Maybe not.

“Kara? What’s that?” Lois called out into the room, “Okay, one second,”. She coughed before starting to speak again, “I have to go. Emergency,” Lois smiled as Kara walked out of her room with a confused look on her face. Lois hung up and smiled at Kara. 

“Just needed you like a little bit of an excuse so I didn’t have to talk to someone,” Lois laughed.

“Cool,” Kara smiled, going over to Lois and climbing onto the couch and snuggling into her side. Lois smiled and pulled Kara close and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. She had already thrown some essentials into two bags and thrown them next to the door. 

“Are you okay?” she asked. 

“I just wanted a hug,” Kara mumbled into Lois’ jumper, gripping it tightly. 

“That’s okay,” Lois laughed, “You can always have a hug,” she murmured into Kara’s hair, pressing another kiss there. 

* * *

Kara had moved to listen to the music by the time the door slammed, shaking the whole apartment. Lois peeked her head out of her bedroom where she had taken to hiding out with the briefing from today, half-heartedly making notes on the sheet. 

“Lois?” Clark called into the apartment. 

“In the bedroom,” Lois called back and he was in there in a second with another door slamming. Lois looked up from her work to see him standing there, fuming. 

“Lex fucking Luthor,” he shouted, spitting the words out. 

“Please don’t shout,” Lois sighed, sliding her work into her bag and turning to face him on the bed, “Kara’s listening to music and I don’t want her to hear your yelling again,”. 

“You know I already didn’t like the fact that Kara joined a school and is friendly with Lena Luthor and now,” Clark took a deep breath, “Now you have Lex fucking Luthor picking her up from school and dropping her off at the office,”. 

“You don’t get an opinion on this,” Lois fired back calmly. 

“I get whatever I want,” Clark shouted back, filled with anger and rage. 

“No, you don’t. You haven’t been here. You’ve barely said two sentences to Kara since she came to Earth. You don’t go and pick her up from school, you’ve never even visited her school. Actually, I’d like to hear you even name the school Kara’s going to,” Lois stopped and looked at Clark expectantly. He suddenly became very quiet. 

“That doesn’t matter. Kara’s my cousin,” he shouted. 

“Keep your voice down,” Lois hissed. 

“Why should I?” Clark yelled. 

“Because your cousin will hear,” Lois fired back, her calm vanishing a little. 

“So,” Clark started to pace up and down the room. 

“So, she’s already had enough pain and nightmares and trauma to last multiple lifetimes. I don’t plan on creating any more for her. Arguments, yelling and shouting have profound effects on young children,”. 

  
“How do you know that? Read a parenting book or something,” Clark laughed mockingly. 

“Yeah,” Lois shrugged, “If you didn’t get the message, we adopted a child,” Lois put emphasis on the word ‘we’ and Clark ducked his head, avoiding Lois’ eyes and a silence fell upon the room. 

The silence was heavy. It wasn’t an ending but instead a middle. Lois wanted an ending. She wanted it all to end. She watched Clark start to pace up and down the room, considering his options. 

“I’m filing for divorce,” Lois eventually broke the silence. Clark didn’t respond but he stopped pacing, turning to look at Lois with a stunned look on his face. 

“In the morning. Lucy’s doing it. I have enough of a case to win custody of Kara,” Lois explained slowly as Clark sat down on a chair in the corner of the room, his head falling into his hands. Lois followed him with her eyes. 

“Why are you doing this to me?” he complained, looking up. 

Lois could only let out a surprised laugh, “I’m,” she paused and took a deep breath, “I’m doing this to you,” she repeated slowly before taking another deep breath. 

“You haven’t been here in months. You treat me and Kara like shit and you have completely checked out of our life. It’s not our life anymore. It’s been just me and Kara since she’s showed up. I used to love you. I used to love you but I don’t anymore. You changed or maybe you just showed your true colours but whatever it is right now, I hate who you are,” Lois’ breath was fast as she finished speaking. 

“Get out!” Clark yelled, the words bursting out of him. 

“With pleasure,” Lois sighed, swinging her work bag onto her shoulder and going out into the hall and picking up her and Kara’s other bags and lifting them onto her back too. She went to Kara’s room and pushed her way in. She was sitting there with her headphones on, her head buried in a book. Lois instantly filled with calm as she looked over at her daughter. Kara looked up with a smile on her face, reaching up and pulling her headphones down.

“Hi Mommy,” she smiled. 

“Hey, sweetheart,” Lois let the bags fall off her shoulders as she went over to Kara, “How do you feel about going for a sleepover?”. Kara blinked, processing the words. 

“Yeah,” she smiled happily. 

“Okay, cool,” Lois breathed, a little more relief filling her. She grabbed Kara’s school backpack and another one, “Do you want to get anything you want for overnight? I already grabbed some clothes and pyjamas for you,”. 

“Got it,” Kara grabbed her school bag off Lois, standing up and getting everything she needed and packing it all methodically into the bag. “Where are we going?” she asked. 

“Cat’s,” Lois smiled as she put the bags back on her back. Kara went to put her own on her back but Lois took it from her instead, adding it to the mass of bags she was carrying, “Go and put on your shoes, sweetie,” she smiled to Kara. She glanced over at the clock. Six forty-five. It was only a ten-minute walk. They’d be fine. 

* * *

Cat stopped pacing as she heard a knock at the door. Carter was sitting on the couch, watching some cartoon that Cat couldn’t understand at all. She had been pacing behind him. She practically ran to the door, pulling it open to see Lois and Kara. 

“Hey,” she breathed with a smile. 

“Hi,” Kara replied excitedly. 

“Hey,” Lois smiled back a lot more subdued. 

Kara stepped forward to give Cat a quick hug. Cat wrapped her arms around her, it still took her by surprise even though it happened a lot. “Carter’s watching a cartoon if you want to join him,” she smiled. Kara left her arms to run off toward the couch. Cat could hear her talking to Carter but she ignored it as she turned to face Lois. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: in season one, cat says if she could legally adopt kara she would... take from that what you will and take what you will from the fact i told you
> 
> catch me on [insta](https://www.instagram.com/trixicbean/?hl=en) and [tumblr](https://trixicbean.tumblr.com/) if you want more of my annoying ass


End file.
